


In The Distance Like The Ocean

by asterlark



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Character with an anxiety disorder (Lance), Discussions of PTSD, Discussions of homophobia/ homophobic language, Getting Together, Graphic Violence, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Mentions of Death, depictions of war, discussions of child abuse, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-09 22:05:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8914684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asterlark/pseuds/asterlark
Summary: Out of all Keith's bad ideas, Lance thinks Keith sacrificing himself to the Galra so the rest of them could get away might be the worst one.Or; Keith gets captured and eventually rescued, and they all learn to live with the aftermath.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hoo boy. this fic has been finished for like a month and i've just been holding onto it because it's the longest thing i've written and i'm anxious to upload it but HERE WE GO. there will be 3 parts- 2 chapters and an epilogue. this fic's a doozy, and there's a lot of warnings to look at so please be careful and take your own safety into account while reading! i'll put warnings before each chapter so you know what you're getting into.
> 
> -i use they/them pronouns for pidge in this fic. i have my own reasons for it, so please don't harass me about that! if you really have questions you can send me an ask or message on tumblr about it. (asterlark.tumblr.com)
> 
> -lance's family is cuban and spanish-speaking in this fic, and he also talks about being raised catholic a few times. there's some spanish scattered about that i just got from google translate and is definitely not 100% accurate, so if you have a correction or if i've written something ignorant here PLEASE don't hesitate to tell me! i want to be as respectful as possible! if the html works you'll be able to hover over the spanish to see the translation, but i'll also have translations in the end notes of each chapter.
> 
> -WARNINGS IN THIS CHAPTER: discussions of anxiety, battle scenes, description of injuries/blood, kidnapping/capture, a character gets shot, gun usage, a few brief mentions of nausea/vomit, nightmares/insomnia, panic attacks, a few brief mentions of passing out

"Shit,” Lance grunts under his breath as a Galra ship collides with the hull of his Lion, everything shaking and rattling around him, “Shit shit shit _shit_.”

Alarms are blaring in his ear and Blue not-so-politely reminds him to watch where the hell he’s going. He not-so-politely communicates back that it’s not his _fault_ , thank you, he’s not that terrible of a pilot, just… bad at getting out of the way.

Usually he’d be trying to make light of everything, cracking jokes over the comms to keep everyone’s morale up, but this mission isn’t going well and they are very, very outnumbered.

Hunk and Pidge are trying to evacuate the planet’s locals to the Castle while Shiro, Lance and Keith run defense and distract the fleet, but it’s not working as well as they would’ve hoped. The Galra know by now that the paladins’ biggest priority is protecting innocent lives, so they’ve started to go straight for the citizens. It’s frustrating, and it makes Lance feel sick to his stomach to think about, but it does succeed in making the team panicky. How the hell are they supposed to distract the Galra fleet away from the locals if the target _is_ the locals?

“Hey Lance,” Keith says casually as he shoots down an enemy ship, and Lance already doesn’t like the sound of this based on his annoying smug voice. “I have an idea.”

“Do I even wanna know?” Lance replies. The alarms are still going and he groans, smashing at buttons to try and fix whatever he can while evading heavy fire. Anything he tries to repair just gets shot again a moment later, so it’s pretty much useless to try, but he’ll be damned if Blue falls apart on him in the middle of a battle.

Keith snorts. “Mm, probably not. But it’s our best shot right now.”

“Okay, whatever.” Lance will try anything at this point. Every time he sees Hunk’s Lion in his peripheral vision the armor looks more and more battered, and the occasional grunt of pained effort from the comms isn’t helping the anxiety simmering in his stomach.

“On my count, fly directly at the main ship, and _fast_. We’re gonna be a battering ram.”

Blue growls in Lance’s mind. He agrees this time. “Why did I think this was gonna be anything less than the worst idea ever?”

“You got a better one?” Keith grunts, sounding suddenly pained, and Lance winces when he glances over to see a big gash in the Red Lion’s side. Any remaining sliver of self-preservation or logic he used to hold flies out the window.

“Yeah, no, fuck it. Let’s be a battering ram.”

“Absolutely not,” Shiro shouts, flying his Lion in front of Pidge’s to shield them and the locals from a blast. 

“No offense, Shiro, but nothing so far has worked, so this is pretty much all we got,” Keith snaps back at him.

“We could form Voltron,” Shiro says, but the defeat in his voice gives him away; even he knows it’s not a great idea.

Allura voices the concerns everyone else is thinking, her voice tight and worried. “Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time. We need to evacuate and we need defense, and we’re unable to do both at once if Voltron is formed.”

Shiro sighs, and Lance can picture him rubbing the back of his neck, a repeated gesture he does when he’s stressed. “Be careful,” is all he says.

“Okay,” Keith says, determined, “On my count, Lance.”

Lance lines Blue up with Keith’s Lion, far enough apart that they can inflict serious damage, and they both look at the fleet head-on. It’s pretty overwhelming when he sees all the ships at once, staring him down with that hot, evil magenta color lighting them up.

He does the sign of the cross over himself-- a habit built up over years of church every Sunday-- and says the prayer, quietly. “ _En nombre del Padre, del Hijo, del Espíritu Santo, amén._ ” He doesn’t do it as often as he should, and he feels a pang of guilt for all the missed traditions. His mom would give him an hour-long lecture if she were here.

But for now, there’s aliens to fight. He revs up the engine, getting ready to speed away, and when Keith counts _three_ , they both propel forward, rapidly approaching the main ship. They’re taking fire from all sides from the smaller ships, and they try to forge a clean path by shooting back. It’s rough, and Blue is growling at Lance again, but he presses on.

When they’re only fifty feet from the ship, Keith shouts, “Brace yourself!”

They barrel into the ship, tearing two large holes in the center and the right side, and sending a few dozen Galra soldiers from inside spinning out into the planet’s dusty sky. Blue is damaged, _feels_ damaged, and Lance is too. It’s hot everywhere, fire and smoke and burning metal, and it’s _loud_ , as well; the alarms of both Blue and the Galra ship screaming over each other make a cacophony of sound. His ribs feel like they’re on fire and every breath through his lungs is sharp and painful. In all the chaos his suit was ripped in a few places, leaving cuts that he can feel stinging against the cool air of the ship.

“Keith!” he yells, “Are you okay?” He tries to back out of the Galra ship, but one of Blue’s legs must be caught in the jagged metal because he can’t move. He can hear Keith’s heavy breath over the comms, but he still hasn’t replied.

“ _Keith_!” he shouts again, desperately shooting at anything remotely looking like a Galra soldier that lands in his sights.

The comms are a mess of panic, and Shiro’s voice rises above it all. “ _Quiet_!” he calls, “What’s going on, Lance?”

“Keith’s silent, I don’t know what’s happening-- I’m trying to leave but I think I’m stuck--” His breathing is ragged and scratchy and he coughs, hard. _Christ_ , some of his ribs are definitely broken.

“Keith, can you hear us?” Shiro shouts. “I’m coming to get you two, hold on!”

A few minutes pass of Lance trying to get Blue to safety and failing, blasting whatever he can see and coughing and feeling like he’s going to pass out. When Keith finally, _finally_ speaks up, he doesn’t sound good.

“You have to get Red out of here,” he says weakly, and everyone starts panic-shouting again.

Lance feels his heart sink. “Keith, where are you? What’s going on?”

“I’m-- I’m down, okay? You have to get Red, I’m not making it out of here,” he replies, and Lance can hear a mess of sound through his earpiece.

“What the hell are you talking about? We’re not leaving without you!” Lance yells. Sweat drips down his forehead and he wipes it away hastily with the back of his hand. The heat of his Lion is pressing down on him and he feels sticky and warm underneath his armor.

“I-- Red’s too damaged, I couldn’t fly out,” Keith says, quieter now. “I’m on foot in the ship and my bayard’s back in the Lion. I didn’t have time to grab it. I… don’t think it’s too long until they find me.”

“I’ll come find you, then!” Lance shouts, ready to jump out of the pilot seat to go help him, despite his own internal damage.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Keith spits instead, “Do you want to give them two of the Lions? Listen, I’m--” he coughs wetly and sighs. “I’m less valuable than Red. You can save my Lion, but you can’t save me. Be smart about this.”

Shiro starts to say something, but is interrupted when a big blast hits Hunk’s Lion.

“We’re on our last legs here, you guys!” Hunk shouts, sounding desperate.

“Get Red and get out of here,” Keith repeats insistently. “I can’t be responsible for any of you getting hurt.”

Shiro finally arrives and helps get Lance unstuck, pulling him out by the back legs, and they both fly quickly around the main ship, looking for the Red Lion. 

“We’re getting Keith, right Shiro?” Lance says, voice bordering on hysteric, waiting for anyone to challenge him on this. They can’t leave Keith behind. They _can’t_. The beginnings of a panic attack make his stomach tight and his eyes watery, and he tries to force himself to calm down, but he can’t fucking breathe.

Their leader is silent for once, and Lance feels like he’s going to throw up. “Shiro,” he says, trying hopelessly to steady his breathing, “We can’t leave him.”

Shiro sighs, quick and sharp. “I don’t-- I don’t know. I don’t want to leave him either, but this is bad, and we can’t let them capture the Red Lion. Allura?”

Allura speaks up over the comms. “Keith is right. We need to leave, _now_. We’ll plan a rescue mission for Keith immediately, but right now the priority is that all Lions are intact and we evacuate the planet.”

Hunk and Pidge quickly protest the idea, both yelling at once. “Are you serious right now?” Hunk cries out. “We can’t be separated like this! No one left behind!”

“He’s our _friend_ , we can’t leave him to the Galra!” Pidge says desperately, breathless from fighting for so long.

“Paladins, calm down,” Coran says suddenly, voice strained. “This is hard on all of us, but evacuation is our first priority.”

Lance tightens his grip on the controls and clenches his teeth. He can’t believe they’re going to leave a team member behind, but it’s not like he can get Keith and get out safely on his own, and the Red Lion is out of commission.

He and Shiro locate the Lion a moment later, docked in a loading bay around the back of the ship. Whoever found Red must’ve relocated it here, a more secure position than the big hole in the center of the ship. They take out the Galra soldiers assigned to the post as fast as possible, then Shiro attaches his own Lion to Red and they back out, blasting as they go. They both suffer some heavy hits, and all the jostling makes Lance’s ribs feel like death, but they eventually escape.

“Pidge, Hunk, what’s the status on evacuation?” Shiro calls, flying as fast as he can with another Lion’s weight to bear.

“Done!” Pidge shouts, “Let’s get out of here, quick!”

Lance doesn’t want to leave Keith, and every inch of distance between them makes him feel sick. “Can you still hear us, Keith?” he asks hopelessly as they fly towards the Castle.

It’s silent for a few moments, then Keith says, “ _Lance_ \--” before his words are cut off by a strangled noise of pain. Lance feels the panic rise up hot in his stomach and wants to turn around so, so badly.

“Keith!” he shouts, “Keith, are you okay?”

The Castle opens a wormhole and before Lance jumps through it, the last thing he hears from Keith’s earpiece is a Galra soldier shouting commands.

“Take him to cell 21-B,” he grunts, then: “Oh, and disconnect that thing.”

Another cry of pain, a mechanical fizzling, then silence.

  


\--

  


Lance feels like he’s vibrating out of his skin by the time everyone assembles in the control room. Coran is trying to usher him-- and pretty much everyone else-- into a healing pod, but Lance won’t budge. He needs to know when they’re going to get Keith. His ribs can wait, along with the anxiety burning in his throat.

He has to lean on Shiro as he says it (because okay, ow, his ribs fucking _hurt_ ), but he grits out forcefully, “What’s the plan? When are we leaving?”

Allura shares a look with Coran, the one she uses when she has to break bad news, and Lance feels his heart sink down, down, down.

Coran clears his throat. “Right, well, the thing is-- we don’t know where he is.”

“What are you talking about?” Lance asks, angry and confused. “He’s on that ship, the one we _just came from_! We know exactly where he is!”

“We can’t track him,” Allura says, apology and worry all over her face. “The Galra must have destroyed his tracker, I can’t find a trace of him anywhere. And they’re long out of this system by now.”

Lance doesn’t know what to do, how to react. His mind is blank for once in his stupid life. “So it’s hopeless,” he manages, and feels Shiro stiffen next to him.

Allura’s expression turns fierce, and she’s the determined leader again, rallying the troops. “It’s _never_ hopeless. There’s got to be something. We’ll find him, Lance.”

Lance nods. He’s too tired to argue anymore. His eyelids are heavy and he’s more exhausted than he realized, putting a lot of his weight into Shiro’s side. His teammate notices, because he lifts him upright and nods at Coran.

“Get a healing pod ready for him, I don’t think we can wait anymore,” Shiro says, and Coran nods shortly, hurrying from the room. Lance would protest, but he feels breathless and lightheaded and sticky from the blood in his cuts, not to mention emotionally drained. And if he’s healthy and rested, he can put his full energy into finding Keith.

If you’d told Lance of last month or last week or even yesterday, he’d probably be astounded that he was so worried about Keith. But it’s one thing to tease and taunt someone about wishing they’d leave and pretending to hate them, and it’s another thing for them to be actually _gone_. 

He didn’t realize how terrible it would feel for Keith to be taken; obviously he loves his whole team, but Keith is… _Keith_. He’s infuriating and annoying and smug, and he never laughs at Lance’s jokes, and he’s a weird, intense, argumentative loner. But he’s still Lance’s friend and teammate, regardless. His absence still feels like a hole in the Castle, sucking all the oxygen out. Lance can physically feel that he’s not here and he hates it, _hates_ it with every burning part of him.

When he steps into the healing pod, Coran on the other side sealing him in with a grim, empathetic expression on his face, the only thing he can think about is Keith in a Galra cell, cold and alone.

  


\--

  


Lance is pacing back and forth in his room, trying to force his stupid brain to come up with a solution.

The healing pod hadn’t taken too long to fix his injuries, so after a few hours of mandatory rest and food forced upon him by Shiro, he’d gone back to trying to figure out how they hell they were going to get Keith back.

He feels restless and useless. He’s not smart how Pidge and Hunk are smart, and he’s not even that great of a pilot like Shiro and-- and Keith. He’s just the fifth paladin, the extra one, the disposable one. He wishes with every fiber of his being that it’d been him who was taken. If it were Keith in his place, he’d have a plan. Probably a bad one, but he’d still charge ahead defiantly and make it work with pure stubbornness and grit, his fierce, determined, bad-boy stupidity.

Lance misses him so much.

After pacing and panicking and hating himself a lot and replaying Keith’s last word in his head over and over ( _Lance_ , _Lance_ , _Lance_ \--) and pacing some more, someone finally knocks on his door with news. It’s Hunk’s nervous voice on the other side.

“Hey, Pidge might have something. Maybe. They’re not sure.” He sounds terrible, so Lance opens the door, and he looks just as bad as he sounds. His hair’s disheveled-- probably from running his hands through it one too many times-- and he looks bone-tired with worry. It’s just like Hunk to be the most torn apart about something like this. It’ll rattle everyone on the team, but Hunk’s not the Yellow Lion’s paladin for nothing. He’s a true brother to all of them, no blood relation required. And he worries more than everyone combined, which is saying something given Lance’s actual anxiety disorder.

Lance must look pretty bad himself, because Hunk’s eyes are soft and concerned after he looks him up and down. “You wanna come to the control room with me?”

He nods, and Hunk puts a comforting hand around his shoulders. He tries to resist melting into it; the physical touch means more to him than any sort of words his friend could offer right now. After a moment Hunk-- because he’s Hunk-- turns it into a hug, solid and warm and endlessly reassuring.

“Dude, how’d we get into all this?” Lance says against his chest, sighing. It’s one of those weird moments where he steps back and remembers that he’s seventeen and in space, fighting an alien who’s been reigning for ten thousand years. Just a matter of months ago he was trying to make fighter pilot in hopes of eventually exploring these very same stars; that feels like a very, very long time ago.

He can feel Hunk shrug. “I dunno, man. We’re just a buncha teenagers. But we’re a _smart_ buncha teenagers, and we’re gonna figure it all out. Promise.”

They separate and exchange watery smiles, and Hunk ruffles Lance’s hair affectionately. “Let’s go find him.”

When they arrive in the control room, Pidge gives the two of them a weak smile. They’re sprawled out on the ground with their computer and some various bits of tech Lance can only assume are for tracking-- he can never tell the difference. Pidge clears their throat to get the attention of the team, then throws up what they’d been working on to the main control screen.

“So I’ve been scanning all the nearby systems for anything that could resemble Keith’s signature, and I think I got something,” Pidge explains. They point to the map of the systems. “I don’t think they destroyed Keith’s suit when they took out the tracker, and Allura remembered that the suit itself can pretty much be one big tracker when activated. The signal’s not that strong, so it’s kind of a long shot, but if we manage to remotely fix up the suit and boost the signal a bit, and we look hard enough…”

They shrug, trying not to look too hopeful. It’s a little too late for that, though-- Hunk is nearly buzzing with energy now that it’s all been laid out. 

“So we have a plan?” Hunk says, optimism and expectation all over his face. Pidge shrugs again.

“I think so,” they say, the corners of their mouth quirking up slightly. “I hope so.”

“It’s something,” Shiro says from across the room, and when Lance looks up, their eyes meet. Shiro gives him a nod, but his intense supportive gaze is a little too much right now, so Lance looks back down at his feet. He’s not going to let himself get his hopes up, just in case this doesn’t work. 

But that doesn’t mean he won’t do everything he can to help.

He sits down next to Pidge, trying for a smile but probably just frowning. It’s been a long… God, he doesn’t even know what time it is, or what day. It’s been a long something.

“What can I do?” he asks softly, and Pidge smiles one of their rare, quietly genuine smiles that make you feel like the most important person in the room.

They pass Lance what looks to be a fancier, Altean version of an iPad and say, “You can help me search through the systems the ship could’ve traveled to in the past day or so. Allura, can you work on figuring out the suit thing, see if we can make the signal stronger?”

Allura nods resolutely and heads to the main control station, waving Coran over to help her. Hunk’s already typing away at another computer, reinvigorated with the news that they might possibly be able to find Keith.

Lance notices Shiro looking around at everyone busying themselves, and he looks worried that he might not be needed. Lance doesn’t want him to feel guilty or anything; it was never his fault, what happened to Keith, and they all need their leader-- and friend-- right now more than ever. He clears his throat, and Shiro looks over.

“I’m kinda hungry,” he says, and Shiro immediately nods, looking relieved to have something to do, someone to help. Lance isn’t really that hungry (missing friends and anxiety make his appetite slim) but it’ll probably good to get some food in him regardless.

“It has been a few hours since we ate, huh?” Shiro says, looking at the clock on the main screen. “I’ll go get something we can snack on.”

They all let out a chorus of thanks, but Lance just smiles at Shiro gratefully. Shiro smiles back as he exits the room, tired and sad but still as sincere as always.

Hours (and hours and hours and _hours_ ) pass and God knows what time it is, and they still haven’t found anything. Careful combing through system after system for any sign of Keith’s suit signature, and they have exactly nothing. Zero. Fucking goose egg.

Lance wants to scream, wants to throw the stupid space iPad across the room, wants to cry. He’s so tired, and he misses Keith, and it’s pathetic but he’d kill to hear something aggravating and smug from him right now. Some insult hurled at him, an eyeroll, a witty and dry comment that’ll leave Lance irritated and looking for the perfect response for at least two days. Something. _Anything_. He hasn’t been without Keith invading his life and his space and his head for months, not since they all started this ridiculous, wonderful, terrifying endeavor. The absence of him feels like a sucker punch to the gut.

After yet another empty system with no Keith signal, Lance lets the tech in his hands drop to the floor, not nearly careful enough, and puts the heels of his hands over his eyes. He tries to think-- he thinks better in Spanish. What did his mom always say when he was anxious over something?

 _Te preocupas tanto, mijo._ A warm smile, her hand on his back, calloused from years of working as a nurse and mending rowdy children’s clothes and washing dishes. _Mi chico bonito. Va a estar bien, lo prometo. Descansa un poco y vuelve a intentarlo mañana._

He takes his hands off his eyes and looks out the window of the ship, sending love to the stars for her like he always does when he’s stressed or sad or missing home. _Te amo, mamá. Te amo, te amo, me haces tanta falta que me duele, te amo._

Hunk must notice him doing this, and because he’s the only one who knows what it means-- they were roommates at the Garrison and childhood friends, and Lance can’t keep anything from him anyway-- he walks over and pries Lance up off the ground. “We’re going to bed,” he says, forcefully in that _I’m taking care of you, dammit_ way he has, and Lance nods dumbly. He could use some rest. Get some rest and try again, and all that. 

He wishes, how he’s wished a hundred times a day, every day since he left Earth, that he could go home for just one single moment. Just a glimpse of the beach. Just one whiff of the ocean, just one seagull, one ray of sunlight. The sun, his own sun, his own ocean, his own garlic knots and pastelitos, his own family.

He immediately feels guilty for Keith, alone in a cell somewhere, only wishing to be right where Lance is right now, not with anyone on Earth. Does he miss his dusty desert shack? It seemed more like a home than anything else, but Lance can’t be sure. What he does know is that he is, _they_ are, Keith’s family now. He has to push aside his own homesickness and be Keith’s family. He thinks he can do that. 

As Hunk drags him to bed and gives him a long, consoling hug, Lance remembers old prayers from Sunday school, whispered at bedtime and in moments of crisis. _Reanima mi espíritu cansado, quédate hoy conmigo."_

Lance may not subscribe to the Catholic church much anymore, but he could definitely use some spirit reviving right about now.

  


\--

  


Days of searching become weeks of searching, and it feels like before Lance can even catch his breath, it’s been a month since Keith was taken. A month without their teammate and friend, and a month of Keith in that Galra ship, all alone.

It feels fucking hopeless. They’ve all been working so hard and nothing’s happening, and with each passing day Lance feels his remaining hope grow smaller and weaker. He tries to argue with the little voice in his head whispering “ _he’s never coming back_ ,” but at this point, it’s hard to disagree. Keith might even be-- they could have--

 _No_. He can’t entertain that possibility. If he’s gonna stay sane and not have a panic attack every ten minutes, Lance needs to believe Keith is still alive somewhere in the vast universe, waiting for a rescue. They just need to find him, which… is easier said than done.

Pidge and Hunk are relentless, combing through system after system and brainstorming on the control room’s big space-whiteboards and thinking up new algorithms that could search for them faster or in a different way. Lance feels useless beside them, just trudging along on one of the computers with his tired brain and tired limbs and tired everything, marking empty systems when he finishes going through them.

It’s been a month, and finding Keith is no longer the only thing on their minds. Allura and Coran thought they should continue doing other missions, and Shiro had reluctantly agreed. There were other people in danger, and they couldn’t flat-out abandon them to put their full attention on locating Keith. Lance couldn’t help but remember Keith’s words from a few months ago, about not rescuing Allura at all, how surprised and angry he’d been. Now he wonders if their places were switched and he were captured, if Keith would care about getting him back at all. He really hopes so.

After two months, as much as the team doesn’t want it to, things begin to adjust around Keith’s absence. They’re used to a spot empty at the dining table, one less voice in their comms during a mission. They’ve grown accustomed to him being gone from team gatherings and his dry wit and teasing. They know what the Keith-shaped hole is like now, and it’s terrible and soul-sucking, but it doesn’t stick out quite as much as it did in the beginning. 

Lance feels it, though, the lack of him, in everything he does. Every moment, every feeling, every sensation, is Keith-less. He’s anxious constantly, and gives up trying to quiet his own head. It aches like a bad heartburn, like growing pains.

Three months, and Lance starts to accept that Keith is probably gone for good. It’s too much to keep hoping and wishing and praying, _por favor, Dios, envíamelo de vuelta, por favor, por favor_ \--

It hurts too much. If he keeps believing it’ll happen, if he keeps thinking that maybe _this_ system will be the one and they’ll find him this time-- it’ll destroy him from the inside out. 

Allura starts looking for replacement paladins for the Red Lion with tears in her throat. Pidge and Hunk aren’t as enthusiastic about searching as before. Shiro falls asleep while looking through a system once, and Lance hears him mumble agitatedly in his sleep, things like “ _not you, too, not you_.” Coran is wracked with guilt, no longer his usual, chipper self. 

Lance can’t sleep. Every time he tries to close his eyes, he hears Keith cry his name over and over, pained and desperate ( _what if that was his last word, Lance’s name, he can’t_ \--), and he has to take a walk around the Castle to calm himself down. When he does manage to sleep, all his dreams are Keith, bloodied and tired, eyes wild, and just out of reach. He screams for Lance, their fingers brush, and Lance wakes up, remembering each time with a jolt that Keith is gone.

It starts to feel permanent. 

  


\--

  


It’s over three and a half months before they find anything. It’s Pidge that discovers it, out of pure will and determination and too many all-nighters searching through systems fueled by weird Altean energy tablets. They call everyone into the control room at holy hell o’clock in the morning, bleary eyed but excited, pointing at a spot on the map of a system far away from the Castle.

“I found a signal,” they say, “Keith’s signal. It’s weak, so we should keep trying to tweak the suit tracker and see if we can make it clearer and stronger, but.”

Everyone is speechless, and Lance feels like he’s going to vomit. He tries not to freak out-- finding Keith’s location doesn’t necessarily equate him being alive. He could be dead, and his suit still working because the Galra need it for some reason. He probably _is_ dead.

But Lance can’t help it; it feels like his bones are sizzling with energy, his entire body awake in a way it hasn’t been in-- shit, almost four months. Keith might still be alive and waiting for them. They have his location. They can _find_ him. It doesn’t seem real at all.

The team is making plans all around him, putting the coordinates in and talking about a plan of attack for when they get there. Lance is barely paying attention. He feels dizzy and weightless and unreal, tired and awake and upset in a way that doesn’t make sense. They’re going to get Keith, so why does he feel so afraid?

(He knows why. What if Keith is alive, but broken beyond repair? What if he’s not the same? What if he’s not Keith anymore?)

He feels a strong hand on his shoulder-- Shiro. He looks up at their team leader, guilty for spacing out. But there’s only kindness in Shiro’s face, and he smiles gently, tiredly.

“Do you want to be with me when I go and get him?” he asks, voice soft, and Lance nods too quickly, no hesitation. 

“Please,” he says, more sincere than he means to. Shiro pulls him into a quick hug, and it’s not Lance’s first Shiro hug, but he can probably count all of them on one hand. He’s surprised by it, but he appreciates it nonetheless. Shiro hugs are like rare Pokemon or the vending machine giving you an extra can of soda; he makes you feel special, loved.

It’s short but genuine, and when they break apart the rest of the team is kind enough to not say anything about it. They all could use more hugs, especially lately.

They only have the location of Keith’s suit, not where he actually is, so it’s all approximation. Shiro has a general knowledge of how Galra ships work, so he and Lance will go aboard, find where the prisoners are kept, and bring back Keith and anyone else they can fit on their Lions. They’re also going to try and get the suit back, since it’s dangerous for any of their tech to be in the wrong hands, but it all depends on how the rescue part goes. Hunk and Pidge-- and Allura and Coran in the Castle-- will run defense and try to draw fire away from Lance and Shiro and their Lions. If all goes well, it’ll be in-and-out. (But it never really is, with them.)

Lance tries to ignore the voice in his head saying that it’s been nearly four months, and they could’ve transferred Keith to another ship by now, a bigger prison… or he could be dead already. This could all be for nothing.

He has to ignore it, push ahead. If he really believes Keith is gone, he’ll fall apart. He needs to keep himself together for this; Keith needs him. The team needs him.

They’re pretty far away from the signal, so it takes a few hours to get there. Lance feels like he’s going to vibrate out of his skin the entire time, and has to force his hands to stop shaking. Panic and worry and desperation are mixing a terrible cocktail in his stomach, and he honestly might puke before they even board the Lions. It’s hard to believe that after months, he’s finally going to have answers. He’ll finally know if Keith is alive or not, and if he is, they’ll have him back. So much time without him, and he’ll finally be home… he can’t even picture it. He’ll wait to be relieved until they have Keith safe and sound in the Castle, if they even get that far.

Shiro finds him stewing in his room when they’re about thirty minutes out and enters the room softly but determined, like everything he does. He closes the door gently behind him and appraises Lance; his messy hair, shaking hands, lip bitten raw. He sits down on the bed next to Lance and it’s quiet for a few moments, but then Shiro wraps an arm around his back.

“I know how hard this is,” he says, voice quiet. “I lost someone-- some _ones_ \-- and I haven’t… gotten them back yet. But we’re gonna get Keith.”

Lance meets his eyes, and they’re sincere and fierce, like always. He remembers everything he’s heard about the Kerberos mission, about Matt and Sam Holt. This is the first time he’s thought about the fact that they were probably all close friends, and he feels a pang of something sad and pitying for Shiro. Pidge isn’t the only one missing their loved ones, he supposes.

“I promise,” Shiro insists, and Lance tries to believe him. It’s hard not to, when he’s so genuine about it. But Lance won’t fully believe they can get Keith back until he’s here, healing and resting and _safe_.

Lance doesn’t stop shaking as they eat, as they all get into their suits, as Allura gives them an encouraging pep talk. Pidge notices and takes both of his hands in theirs, moments before they all leave to board the Lions.

“Stop,” they say simply, “It’s okay. We’ll get him.”

Their eyes are huge and shiny from pre-tears, but they’re so fucking brave that Lance can’t help but feel brave too. If Pidge can, he can. He tries really hard not to tear up and nods.

“Yeah.” He breathes, in, out, in, out. “Yeah. Okay.”

It’s rough, once they’re in their Lions and heading for the Galra ship. It’s huge, bigger than Lance remembers, and it’s obvious that they weren’t expecting the paladins, but they fire everything anyway. Lance is able to get a few good hits in, but then he’s definitely on their radar and has to spend a while ducking and weaving, trying his hardest to get close enough to board the ship.

Hunk must notice him having a hard time, because he flies over to block a shot. His Lion shakes with the effort but remains steady. “Go!” he shouts at Lance, loud and breathless, “Go find Keith, hurry!”

Lance flies as fast as Blue can take him-- dodging shot after shot along the way and getting hit more often than he’d like to admit-- to what looks like a loading dock and spends at least ten minutes getting rid of all the soldiers posted there. Shiro’s nowhere to be seen yet.

“Shiro?” he asks over the comms, “Where are you? I’m ready to go aboard.” His eyes are scanning the loading dock for any possible soldiers; he doesn’t want to exit Blue yet, just in case a whole battalion shows up and all he has is his bayard.

Shiro sounds pained when he answers, like he’s taken a lot of damage. “Be there in a-- _ugh_ , in a second.”

It’s making Lance nervous to sit and wait here where him and his Lion being taken is a likely possibility, but he doesn’t have many other options. He’d spend way too long trying to find the prison cells, and it would be stupid to go alone anyway.

By the time Shiro arrives a few minutes later, Lance’s hands have started shaking again. He smacks them against his legs, willing himself to stop being anxious. It’s not going to help him now to be scared, but he can’t help it. This isn’t a routine mission. This is _Keith_ , and if it all goes to hell, there’s way too much on the line. They can’t fail.

Shiro and Lance exit their Lions and share a look, the “ _shit, here we go_ ” sort. Shiro nods shortly and they’re off, running down corridor after corridor, trying to find the prison part of the ship. It’s different from where Shiro was held during his year as a Galra prisoner, but the layout is essentially the same, so he gets a hold of it after a few minutes. They have to be stealthy, hiding in doorways and alcoves; it’s not smart to try and take on every soldier they see. They have to save their energy for getting the hell out of here.

That strategy doesn’t last long, though, because as they arrive in the prison bay-- “This is it,” Shiro says quietly, nervously, “This looks exactly like where I was kept.”-- a dozen soldier drones guarding the place snap to attention and head their way.

Lance grips his bayard, his gun materializing, and Shiro takes a fighting stance, his metal arm lighting up neon magenta. The guards are just drones, pretty easy to take care of, but it’s just the two of them and they can’t be watching each other’s backs since they’re pretty busy fighting, so Lance takes a hard hit to the nose after a few minutes. He stumbles back, cursing while blood rushes from his nose, but the drones don’t stop coming. 

He fights with blood clogging his nose, with the taste of iron in his mouth. He’s never been the best fighter (he’s never been the best anything), so he gets a few more scrapes and bruises throughout the fight on his cheekbone, abdomen, ankle. When all the drones are finally destroyed and Shiro and Lance are officially roughed up, they look at each other again, and Lance can tell Shiro’s judging how hurt he is.

“Your nose okay?” Shiro asks, and Lance nods, prodding it with a finger. It stings more than he’d expected it to, and he winces.

“Yeah. I dunno, it’s probably broken, but it’s not too bad. Just can’t… breathe through my nose,” Lance says, shrugging. He can see the worry on Shiro’s face, but he stubbornly ignores it. This, today, isn’t about him.

“C’mon, let’s go,” he prompts, and Shiro nods, his arm reverting back to its non-glowing, normal state.

The prison section of the ship is _huge_. Lance’s heart sinks as they search cell after cell for Keith and he realizes there’s no way they’ll be able to liberate all these prisoners. They’ll have to leave a lot behind, and that doesn’t sit right with him at all, but it has to be done. Getting Keith and getting out in one piece is more important than saving everyone.

He catches himself there, thinking like Keith. It makes his chest feel funny and he picks up the pace, searching cells faster, looking for any sign of him. It’s a little hard to tell because it’s dark and he may not have his suit on, so it’s taking an infuriatingly long time to find him. They’re _so close_ , and Keith is in this prison bay somewhere, and they just need to find him--

“Lance,” Shiro calls suddenly from a few cells down, his voice odd and strained, “Is this--?”

Lance approaches the cell Shiro’s standing in front of and peers in. It’s empty save for a curled up figure in the corner wearing something very similar to the paladins’ under armor, albeit very tattered and beat-up looking.

“Keith?” he calls, nervously. There’s no response for one, two, ten seconds, so he tries again. “Keith, is that you?”

The comms are a mess of noise, all exclamation and confusion and excitement and questions, and Lance turns his off in order to hear the prisoner better. Shiro sees him do this and says, “Hold on, everyone, we’re trying to figure this out,” before turning his own earpiece off as well.

The figure doesn’t move, doesn’t react to Lance’s words at all, but after a few more seconds they say in a small, meek voice, “Please, I-- not again.”

It’s _Keith_ , it’s Keith’s voice-- relief floods Lance’s entire body and despite his clogged up nose he feels like he can breathe for the first time in months, but--

What did he mean by _not again_? 

“It’s me, Keith, it’s Lance,” he urges, feeling more panicky by the second. “Shiro’s with me, everyone else is outside… Do you know where you are? Do you know who I am?”

He sees Keith shake his head slightly, a tiny movement. “Please, I’m not gonna tell you anything, I can’t-- just leave me alone, _please_.”

He sounds pained, desperate, _terrified_ , and Lance doesn’t know what to do. Why is Keith scared of him? What the hell did the Galra do to make him like this?

Lance hears footsteps of soldiers in the distance, and Shiro looks at him, his face stricken. 

He peers around the corner and there must be a lot of soldiers on their way, because he looks anxious. “We have to get going, and _soon_.”

Lance nods, his brows furrowed. It doesn’t matter if Keith is acting strange right now, they need to get him out of here. He materializes his bayard, shooting at the cell lock to break it. Shiro helps him drag the door open, and still Keith isn’t moving.

Keith curls into an even tighter ball when Lance approaches him, and when Lance puts a hand on his shoulder, meaning to be comforting, he can feel Keith shaking with fear. He swallows hard and sits, shifting so he can see Keith’s face.

“Listen, I don’t know what they did to you, but we can talk about it later, okay? I promise we’ll get you all fixed up, but we have to go now. The rest of the team can’t hold out forever.”

Now that he’s this close, Lance can see the extent of Keith’s physical injuries. He has a large scar running down the length of his left jawline and various cuts and bruises all over, littering his skin with black and blue and red. There’s a sizable wound on his arm that looks infected and dozens of faded burn marks on his neck and chest. He’s naturally pretty thin, but he looks way too skinny; his under armor hangs loose over his torso. He looks like he hasn’t slept in months; it occurs to Lance that maybe he hasn’t.

Keith looks up at him for the first time, his face confused and so incredibly sad, and Lance feels his heart shatter just a little more.

“I promise you’ll be safe,” Lance says, quiet and sincere. “I promise, but we have to go, okay?”

Keith looks at him for a long moment and slowly, cautiously puts a hand on his arm, like he’s testing to see if Lance is really there. “Do you promise this is real?”

The question takes Lance by surprise but he nods immediately, and on impulse, places a hand over Keith’s. “I promise. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

Keith still doesn’t look like he believes him, but he nods back, face conflicted and hard.

Lance helps him up, wincing when Keith lets out a terrible groan of pain. He leans against the cell wall for a moment, catching his breath, then rights himself. Lance notices he can’t walk very well so he wraps an arm around Keith’s back, lifting him up slightly. He can feel Keith’s ribs in his hand, unusually pronounced, and he swallows down his own disgust. How could anyone do this to him?

They finally exit the cell together and Shiro looks so relieved that Keith is standing and relatively okay that he smiles at Keith, attempting to put a hand on his shoulder.

Keith flinches back harshly, and Shiro’s hand stays in the air for a single, shocked moment. He drops it after a second, looking sad and confused and very, very worried. “It’s really good to see you, Keith,” he says gently, sadly, and Keith only nods, looking numb as he gazes at his feet.

They start the arduous process of unlocking cells and releasing prisoners, directing them to where Blue and Black are parked. They only have time to release about ten cells before the Galra soldiers are upon them, firing into the crowd with no care as to who they might hit.

Shiro yells over the noise, giving directions and encouragement, but it’s all Lance can do to keep himself and Keith upright and moving. He’s focused so hard on breathing, running, helping Keith, avoiding shots-- he feels guilty, but there’s no way he can help out any prisoners right now. Keith is making low pained noises next to him with every step, and Lance knows he won’t last too much longer. He’s probably spent these past few months being so scared, so alert and restless, that Lance is betting as soon as he gets inside Blue he’ll pass out.

He turns his earpiece back on after realizing that it’s much too chaotic to _attempt_ to even find Keith’s suit. “Allura, I’m sorry, but I highly doubt we’re gonna be able to get the suit back,” Lance grunts, maneuvering himself and Keith around a corner, the Galra soldiers not far behind.

He hears a quick sigh over the comms. “That’s alright, just focus on getting out of there safely. It might be of use to us to have one of our trackers on this ship, anyway.”

“That’s the spirit!” Coran shouts, always coming through to rally the team, and Lance manages a blood-soaked smile. God, his nose hurts. He really hopes it won’t be crooked after this.

It’s mayhem with all the prisoners running and the soldiers shooting at them, but they manage to make it to the loading dock in decent time-- now the struggle is fighting their way the hell out of here.

Shiro covers Lance as he limp-shuffle-runs Keith into Blue’s cockpit, setting him down as gently as he can next to the pilot seat. Keith looks really out of it now, and he groans as he makes contact with the ground. Lance winces, looks outside-- fuck, that’s a lot of soldiers-- and promises Keith that he’ll be right back.

He’s trying to usher prisoners in his and Shiro’s Lions as fast as possible, but the process is still pretty slow and while Shiro is a very talented fighter, he can’t hold his own forever. Eventually Lance has to shout at the prisoners to run while he and Shiro fight off soldier after soldier after soldier. Shiro’s more proficient than him at this, always has been, so he’s slicing through drones and Galra men with that fierce, manic energy he exudes during fights. Lance, however, is already not at top condition, and his gun can only do so much.

The bayard can probably hear his fucking thoughts, or something else equally as creepy, because moments after Lance has the thought, it shifts into a bigger, sleeker, machine-gun looking device. Lance has no time to marvel at it; he’s getting his ass beat, so he yells “Shiro, duck!” and starts firing, mowing down almost all the soldiers in one go. Shiro stands after the fire recedes, looking a mix of anxious, confused and impressed.

He’s about to say something, but there’s still one Galra man left, and Lance sees him point his gun right at Shiro’s head--

Lance doesn’t think, just jumps in the way, firing his newly-formed machine gun for good measure. It’s not enough, because the soldier’s bullet finds Lance’s shoulder, blowing straight through his armor, before his own bullets lodge in the soldier’s chest.

At least they’re all dead now, Lance thinks as pain explodes from his shoulder, electric and visceral, blood staining his armor red. At least they can get the fuck out of here.

Shiro’s saying something panicked to him, but his nose hurts and his shoulder _really_ hurts and it’s hard to think with the scent of blood in the air. _God_ , he killed all those men. They were bad men, but that doesn’t stop bile from rising up in his throat and making his mouth taste sour. _Mierda_ , what would his mom think of him? How is he going to sleep tonight?

He can feel arms around him and he’s being carried somewhere, feels a worried presence in his head-- _Shiro? No, Blue_ \-- and he’s sitting next to an unconscious Keith now, Shiro saying something in his ear that sounds important. Lance is too focused on his unconscious friend next to him, because he’s just realized that Keith’s hair has grown over the past few months, and it’s almost shoulder length now. It’s nice.

“--Don’t think you can fly, so I’ll grab you and get us to the Castle, okay buddy?” Shiro is saying fuzzily. Fuck, it’s hard to focus. Shiro’s eyes are so worried, raking over Lance’s face helplessly, that Lance feels the need to reassure him.

“Don’t stress, ‘s just a bullet,” Lance says, and are his words slurring?, “I’ve had those before. I think. Have I been shot before, Shiro? I can’t remember.”

Shiro looks confused, and Lance realizes he might’ve said part of that in Spanish. He can’t think straight, and his brain is resorting to what’s easy. Lo que le es familiar, a lo que está acostumbrado.

Everything is very blurry. Blue feels comforting in his mind, like a cat mentally licking his wounds ( _ha, ha_ ). He’s so tired. He has Keith, and he feels like shit, and he’s so relieved and so in pain, and. Everything’s just a lot right now.

It’s an odd thing, to go through the process of mourning someone and then have them sitting right next to you.

Shiro’s gone the next time he opens his eyes, and they’re moving, moving, flying towards the Castle, and Lance is so tired-- he’ll just close his eyes, just for a second, _Carajo_ , su hombro duele\--

  


\--

  


Lance wakes up behind the door of a healing pod and when it fizzles open, Hunk’s on the other side to catch him. He wraps Lance up in one of his bone-cracking hugs, mumbling a stream of relieved happy things, and Lance mumbles back, “ _Ay_ , acabo de recibir un disparo, ¿recuerdas?”

Hunk had picked up a lot of Spanish from growing up with Lance, plus the classes he’d taken before they went to the Garrison together. Lance has noticed over the years that him speaking in his native language with Hunk helps the both of them a lot, so he tries to do it when he remembers. It makes them both feel at home.

Shiro clears his throat from the corner of the room.

“Don’t break him again,” he teases softly, and when Lance looks at him, he has dark circles under his eyes. He feels guilty for worrying everyone on top of the worry they already had for Keith.

When Hunk lets go, muttering “ _Lo siento_ ” with a small smirk, Lance can see that the whole team is assembled here. “How long was I out?” he asks. His shoulder is still a little sore-- healing pods don’t fix everything.

“Two days,” Allura answers, looking equally as tired as Shiro. Pretty much everyone looks like they haven’t slept since they got Keith back, which--

“What about Keith?” Lance asks, and Coran points to the pod next to him. Keith’s still in there. Lance’s rational brain knows that Keith was more injured than him and needs more time to heal, but he still feels anxiety spike in his gut.

He swallows nervously. “How long do you think he’ll be in there?”

“At the least, another five or six days,” Allura says. She tucks her hair behind her ears and sighs. “Although, it’s all guesswork. He could need another week and a half to heal, or more.”

Lance nods, and nods, and tries not to freak out. He just got Keith back, and now he has to wait an indeterminable amount of time before he can see him again, speak to him, touch him? He’s going to drive himself mad; no wonder everyone else looks so burnt out.

“Okay,” he says, feeling deflated and sad and _tired_. 

Allura explains that while he was out, they dropped the refugees that they rescued on a peaceful, nearby planet, and mentions that they thanked Lance and Shiro by name over and over. Lance feels a little better at that; he’s really grateful they were able to save at least some prisoners off that hellhole of a ship.

His stomach grumbles suddenly, and Pidge must hear, because they look up from their computer and say, “Let’s go eat dinner, I’m starving.”

On the way to the kitchens, Pidge catches up with him and shoves his shoulder. “He’ll be okay,” they say, and Lance nods tiredly.

“Yeah, I hope so.” Lance rubs at his eyes with his hands. He’s not going to cry in front of Pidge. Or anyone, for that matter. He’ll eat dinner and be a normal person and when he goes to bed he’ll have a nice, long cry. For Keith and for himself, and for how he can’t forget the sound of bullets echoing around that ship’s hangar. 

Pidge is Pidge, though, so they sense Lance being off. “You… really missed him, huh?” they say, raising an eyebrow. “Wonder why that is?”

Lance has no fucking clue what they’re talking about. Of course he missed Keith, they’re teammates and friends. He’d feel the same about any of the others. Wouldn’t he?

He doesn’t know how to respond, so he settles with a stupid-sounding, “What?”

“Nothing,” Pidge says, but Lance catches the ghost of a smirk on their face as they turn away.

He spends the entirety of dinner stewing about those fucking words. Whatever. He knows what Pidge is doing, and he doesn’t like Keith like that. He doesn’t. In fact, he’s never even considered it. That’s gross, and fraternizing, and-- and he has a billion other reasons why it’s bad and wrong. He can’t even imagine kissing Keith. (He can. What if his lips are soft? He probably has soft lips.) He hates his stupid, smug, ugly face. (It’s not ugly. There’s so many annoying things about Keith, but the guy isn’t ugly, that’s for sure. Especially with that longer hair. God. _God_.) He would never like Keith. Never. 

( _Never say never_ , he thinks when he’s brushing his teeth before bed, and wants to slap himself.)

He tries to push away those thoughts, but all that remains are the memories of the earlier fight. His dreams are Keith and blood and purple Galra fur, the all-encompassing noise of machine guns and Shiro’s desperately worried face. When he jolts awake from the nightmares late at night, he swears his mouth tastes like iron.

  


\--

  


Keith doesn’t wake up the next day, or the next, or the next.

Lance knows what Allura said, knows that Keith could take a week or more to heal, but he camps out in front of Keith’s healing pod anyway. Hunk brings him food and distracts him with funny stories or games, Pidge sits silently with him working away on their computer, and Shiro sleeps next to him in the weird space-sleeping bags they found in one of the Castle closets. (They’re bright fuschia and smell like dust and a weird, unnameable chemical, but they work.) Coran checks on Keith’s pod at least five times a day, and Allura gives Lance reassuring, kind smiles and pep talks whenever she comes by to see Keith.

The team seems to have an understanding about this, and Lance knows they think they’re really sneaky and subtle, taking care of him like this, but he doesn’t mind. He misses being taken care of. The only annoying thing about it is, he can tell they all assume it’s because he loves Keith or something. Which of course he doesn’t; he doesn’t even really _like_ him. They’re friends, of course, and teammates, and they hang out sometimes, but-- they’re always fighting. They can’t go two minutes without being in each other’s faces. It’s a disaster. _They’re_ a disaster.

So what if Lance feels a small, bright twinge of pleasure in his chest when he thinks of him and Keith together. That doesn’t mean anything. He’s just lonely, is all. He misses home, and Keith reminds him of home…? Or something? Whatever. It’s definitely not because he likes him. Keith is impossible, and he’d probably be a terrible boyfriend.

(He resolutely ignores the way his heart does little flip-flops whenever he thinks _Keith_ and _boyfriend_ in the same sentence.)

One night him and Shiro are settling down to sleep, all the lights off except for Keith’s pod and the distant stars shining through the windows, and Shiro clears his throat uncomfortably.

“So,” he says, in his Dad-about-to-have-a-hard-talk voice, “So. Um.”

Lance wants to groan, because he’s 99 percent sure this is about him and Keith, and he does _not_ want to talk about this with someone he very much looks up to. Or anyone, for that matter.

“So…” Shiro continues, “You wanna tell me what’s going on with you lately?”

Lance freezes; he can’t help it. “What do you mean?”

“With Keith,” Shiro supplies. Yep, there it is.

“I don’t… he’s my friend? He’s my friend and teammate and he was missing,” Lance says, swallowing. His mouth is dry. “And in danger. And I was worried. Are you telling me you weren’t?”

He can hear Shiro sigh in the dark. “Of course I was worried, Lance. But you weren’t _just_ worried.”

Lance doesn’t know what to say to that, because he has no clue what Shiro means. He _was_ just worried. What else would he be? He wanted Keith back, and he was anxious about it. So?

After a few seconds of silence, Shiro sighs again. “Look, I’ve been in your position. I-- still am. Someone you care about a lot was missing, and you felt like you’d never be happy again until he was back with you, right? Like if you didn’t get him back, you would never be the same?”

Lance swallows again. He feels stupid and breathless and he doesn’t want to have this conversation. “I-- yeah, I guess. I don’t know.”

“Lance, we all care about Keith, but not like that, not like you do. I know, because I’ve _been_ you, and it’s not the same.” Shiro’s voice is insistent but soft, the ultimate big-brother talk voice. “Listen, I’m not trying to tell you how you feel, but I thought you might need a nudge. We can all be a little stubborn about feelings, right?”

Lance feels nauseous. Does he actually like Keith? No. Yes. _God._

“Yeah.” He rubs his eyes, feeling more tired in both his body and soul than he has in forever. “Shit. I dunno. It’s complicated.”

“Give him some time,” Shiro says, after a minute, “And when there’s a good moment, just talk to him about it. If it makes you feel better, I think he likes you too.”

Lance can hear the smile in Shiro’s smug fucking voice and wants to smack him. He tries not to freak out, internally or otherwise. “Why do you-- what makes you think that?” Smooth.

“We knew each other before I ever knew the rest of you. I know what he looks like when he’s crushing,” Shiro replies.

Lance huffs. “Obnoxious and rude and cold and a total asshole?” 

“Yeah, pretty much,” Shiro laughs.

Oh. Well.

Shiro says goodnight and turns over a few minutes later, leaving Lance to process all this information with Keith sleeping only three feet away.

So… he likes Keith. (Ew.) He knew that, -ish. Just not the full extent of it. 

The fluttering in his chest had gotten even worse when Shiro suggested Keith might like him back, that he might have an actual chance. God, when did all this start becoming real? It used to all be one big fantasy Lance would think about as he was falling asleep; him and Keith, back together again, holding hands as they walk through the hallway. Him and Keith, cuddling and waking up together. Him and Keith on days off, spending afternoons on sunny planets, eating whatever alien variation of ice cream they can find. Him and Keith, Keith and him, together, always together.

Now that it might be reality, Lance feels anxiety burn hot in his stomach. So much could go wrong, if he were to actually try and talk to Keith about this. How would he even go about that? His last relationship, a girl named Jess back at the Garrison, feels like it happened a lifetime ago. He feels sick, and exhausted.

For now, at least, Keith keeps sleeping. For now, he doesn’t have to worry about it.

  


\--

  


When Keith does wake up in the evening five days later, Lance is the only one in the room. He jolts up when he hears the hissing noise of the pod opening, and catches Keith from falling to the floor.

Keith is in his arms, heavy and solid and cold from the pod, and he looks at Lance for a long moment before coming to himself and lurching away. He looks scared again, like how he was in the Galra cell, and Lance feels guilt and sadness swirl around in his chest. He doesn’t know what they did to him to make him so terrified, but it can’t have been good.

“Are you… okay?” he tries. Keith’s just looking around the room slowly, taking in the pods, the windows, the doors. Lance notices that the pod cleared away the bruises and wounds, but the burn marks on his neck and chest and the large scar on his jaw remain, just slightly smaller and less red. He swallows, hard. It doesn’t make Keith any less handsome, but he knows if he had scars like that, especially from being in such a traumatic situation, he’d hate them. He wonders when the last time Keith saw his reflection was.

Keith’s eyes focus on Lance again, after he finishes glancing around the room, and he frowns. “This has never happened before,” he says. “What is this?”

Lance has no idea how to answer that question. “I… what? What are you talking about?”

They don’t have time to continue the conversation, because at that moment the entire team bursts through the doors, making a variety of loud and relieved noises.

“We were eating,” Pidge says, slightly out of breath, “And we got the notification that the healing pod was opened.”

Allura strides over to where Keith is standing, a gentle smile on her face. “I’m so glad you’re alright, Keith. You gave us quite a scare.”

Hunk joins her, clapping Keith on the back and looking like he might cry. “We missed you, buddy. Glad to have you back.” 

Soon everyone is huddled around Keith, talking to him and laughing, and Lance can see his panicked eyes slide from person to person.

“Are you hungry? I can serve something up for you!” Coran says, patting Keith on the shoulder.

Keith stiffens. “I--”

“He’s probably tired,” Shiro says, and turns to Keith. “Do you want to just rest and eat later?”

They all look to Keith for an answer, and Lance can see now that he’s shaking. “I-- I don’t--” He puts his hands over his ears and clenches his eyes shut. “I don’t know what’s going on, I-- please--”

Lance breaks through the crowd, frowning at the team. “Give him some space, he’s probably really overwhelmed.”

He puts a hand in between Keith’s shoulder blades and guides him a few feet away, rubbing small circles on his back. Keith is stiff and shaking, though, and the contact doesn’t seem to be helping, so Lance drops his hand.

“What do you need?” he asks in a whisper, and Keith shakes his head. His eyes are open, but he still has his hands up, like he needs to be on the defensive. 

“I don’t know if it’s real,” Keith says, so quietly, “I can’t tell, I can never tell.”

Lance feels his heart sink. What the hell did they do to him?

“Do you want to be away from everyone?” he asks, softly. The team is staring at them both, but he gives them all a death glare and they look away.

Keith nods, looking small, and Lance exhales. That’s something he can do.

“I think he’s overwhelmed, I’m gonna take him to his room,” he says to everyone else.

They all look worried, and Shiro steps forward, eyebrows knitted together. “Lance, I think he’s having a panic attack.”

Lance freezes. He’s much too familiar with the process of a panic attack, but his don’t manifest in a very physical way-- mostly just some shaking and being out of breath, and everything else is internal. But Keith is a different story, and he looks terrified.

“Yeah,” Lance says, noting Keith’s heaving breaths and wild, unfocused eyes, “Yeah, shit. I’ll take care of him, don’t worry.”

The rest of the team minus Hunk seem a little apprehensive at Lance being the one to help Keith through this, and he feels his stomach do an anxious flip-flop at the reminder that no one really knows about his mental illness. Hunk knows because Hunk knows everything about him, and he suspects maybe Shiro has guessed, but otherwise… they probably don’t think he has any experience with this. He remembers the time he was so anxious about taking a test that he threw up and had to go home, or the time he passed out because he was so overwhelmed and anxious in a crowd, and he almost lets out a bitter laugh. He wants to shout out, _Don’t fret, anxiety’s my middle name, folks! I got this!_

No one protests, though, despite their worried expressions, so he takes Keith to his room, hoping that it’ll help him to be amongst his belongings. He doesn’t have much-- some hair stuff, a change of clothes, a book or two, and some bracelets that look like they were left over from his middle school days. Lance has only actually been in here a handful of times, and was always shoved out by an irritated Keith before he had the chance to look around. He doesn’t even know what the books are. What does Keith read? Probably weird, pretentious emo poetry.

Keith sits on his bed, looking very far away. Lance sits next to him, and almost puts his hand on his back before remembering that the contact didn’t work before, so it probably won’t now. Keith is still shaking, his breath coming in erratic bursts. He looks like he might start crying, and fuck if that isn’t a terrible development.

“Hey, can you look at me?” Lance asks quietly, and after a few moments Keith turns to meet his eyes. He looks hesitant, and scared. “We’re gonna breathe together, okay? Just breathe with me.”

Lance breathes slowly, in through his nose and out through his mouth like his mom would tell him to whenever he was crying, or like how Hunk would when he got panic attacks while they were hanging out. He and Keith are sitting close enough that they can feel each other breathe, and Keith is still looking at him, eyes wide and vulnerable. After a few minutes of breathing together, Keith seems to be a bit better; he’s a little more steady and not shaking anymore, although he still looks pale. He stops looking at Lance and stares down at his shoes.

“Are you okay? I’m sorry you got ambushed like that,” Lance says regretfully. He loves his team, but they can be pretty overwhelming sometimes.

Keith nods. He’s silent for a few more moments, and then he says, so softly Lance can barely hear, “Can you… can you tell me something real? Something they wouldn’t know?”

Lance doesn’t have to ask to know that _they_ means the Galra. Keith’s obviously still scared and untrusting, and is looking for something to ground him in reality. He thinks for a second. 

“Okay, so, my very first crush that I can remember was on this boy at school named Nico, and at the time I couldn’t recognize it as a crush because I didn’t know what bisexual was, I just knew that he made me feel weird. So every time I saw him I called him stupid and kicked him in the shins.” Lance laughs, remembering. “He _hated_ me. I mean, for good reason, geez. I have a scar on my elbow from this time he pushed me into the rocks on the playground.”

When Lance looks back at Keith, he’s staring at Lance’s face instead of his shoes. “You’re bi?” he asks, a weird expression on his face. Lance can’t tell if it’s disgust or confusion or something else entirely, but it makes him feel a little stupid for sharing that story.

“Yeah,” he answers flatly, kind of miffed at Keith’s reaction, and Keith looks away. Neither of them say anything for a while, and it seems like the matter’s dropped, so Lance clears his throat. “Is that good? Because I have more stories.”

Keith opens his mouth, then shuts it. “I’m-- I’m kind of tired, actually.”

Lance feels like an idiot. Of course he’s tired after all those months of captivity. Plus, the post-pod grogginess really fucks you up. He’s probably in sore need of a long nap.

“Right, sorry, I should’ve realized,” he says, hastily standing up from the bed. “Um, if you need me or anyone else, just ask.”

Keith nods. He still looks not completely settled, like he stands out from the room. He’s probably not used to being here, and it’ll take some time until he can relax again.

It doesn’t feel right to leave Keith alone after the week and a half he spent sleeping in the healing room watching over him, but he closes the door behind him anyway. He’ll be close by, and Keith can come get him if he needs him.

He meets up with the team to eat dinner-- none of them are full since Keith’s awakening interrupted them-- and they all have endless questions for him. 

“Were you able to find out what he was upset about?” Hunk asks around a mouthful of green Altean goop.

Lance swallows his own bite. “Well, for one thing, the overcrowding probably didn’t help.” Hunk looks guilty at that, as does the rest of them, but Lance continues. “He’s okay, I think, just overwhelmed and weirded out. I think… he’s having trouble telling what’s real?”

He sees Shiro frown deeply. “He probably has post-traumatic stress. Galra prisons are… a nightmare.”

He looks pained, and Lance knows his dad instincts are kicking in big time, especially since he struggles with PTSD too. He’s never explicitly stated it, but Lance’s cousin Cisco suffers from it after his time in the army, and he knows what it looks like. No one deserves that, and Shiro is probably feeling terrible that Keith has to go through what he’s going though. 

Lance gives him a small smile that he hopes is comforting. Shiro is such a good person, and it goes a little too far sometimes, a little too protective and self-sacrificing. Lance knows that he’s the one that gets the most homesick, but Shiro’s definitely the one that most needs a damn break.

“That would make sense,” Hunk replies to Shiro’s comment solemnly. “That really freaking sucks, though.”

They all nod sadly, in agreement, and eat in silence for a little while. Lance hates that it’s like this, so quiet and still, even with Keith back and relatively safe. It was supposed to stop being terrible when he came home, but it’s still sad and angry and bitter, just in more retroactive ways. Lance supposes was so focused on rescuing Keith that he never really stopped to think how bad his condition would be when he returned. 

Pidge is the one to break the silence, dropping their fork on their empty plate with a loud clatter.

“I wish we could’ve blown up that fucking ship,” they say, their voice biting and sour, and Lance smiles a little. It’s just like Pidge to be so angry; and it probably helps them to feel that over sadness and pity.

“Pidge,” Shiro warns tiredly, although probably for the language more than anything. He definitely would’ve had them blown up the ship if they could have formed Voltron at the time.

Pidge folds their arms, indignant. “So what, everyone else can curse except me?”

“You’re the youngest,” Shiro replies, and laughs when Pidge huffs, annoyed, mumbling about free speech under their breath. “You’re just like your brother.”

The two of them freeze for a moment, both seemingly startled by the mention of Matt Holt, but Pidge relaxes after a moment and even manages to smile, albeit a bit watery.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” they say, and the remaining tension in Shiro’s shoulders melts away. 

He nods, smiling warmly. “You should.”

After a still moment, Shiro seems to remember something and turns to Lance. “We haven’t even gotten to talk about your new bayard trick. You wanna tell them how you saved my hide back on that ship?”

Everyone turns to look at him, eager and surprised and expecting, and he feels himself go hot. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He never wants to use that trick again. Sure, he’s used his bayard to shoot people before, and he’s blasted apart ships with Blue, but… those were always from a pretty far distance. This was up close and personal, and he shot so many men in such a short amount of time. He can’t forget the sound, that terrible fucking sound, and the _smell_. That’s with him forever now. Cisco told him there’s some things about war you never forget, try as you might, and he knows for sure now that that’s true.

He feels sweaty and dirty and wrong even at the mention of it. “I… I don’t like it. The machine gun, I don’t like it.”

“You have a machine gun?” Hunk gasps, incredulous. “Dude, that’s awesome!”

Shiro only frowns, but seems to catch on quicker than the rest of them. “Why not?” he asks, and locks eyes with Lance, his gaze solid and affirming.

“I don’t like the-- the sound,” he says, quiet as possible. “There was a lot of blood, and… I killed them. I know they were bad people, but they’re still dead because of me. They were right there, so close, and I could see everything.”

He shivers despite being hot. It’s completely silent, and he doesn’t have to look up to know that everyone has shocked expressions on their faces. Lance is never the serious one. But he can’t make a joke out of this.

“You had to,” he hears Shiro say, “You saved all those citizens, Lance. That was really brave.”

Now that he’s talking about it, Lance can’t stop replaying those few minutes in his head like a horrifying, looping movie. He shakes his head, staring down at his plate. He doesn’t feel brave. Killing doesn’t feel brave.

“What you’re feeling is perfectly normal,” Allura reassures him. “Especially for one as young as you are. War leaves no one unscathed, unfortunately for us.”

Everyone offers words of encouragement and validation, but Lance just feels sick. He thanks everyone and ignores their worried glances to each other as they all part ways for the night. It’s been a long day, what with Keith waking up and getting used to having him back and mostly intact, plus all the battle memories and emotions. There were a lot of emotions flying around lately.

Mostly to distract himself, Lance thinks about Keith as he puts his dishes away, as he gets ready for bed, and as he lies down to sleep. He wonders if Keith is still sleeping, or if he ever slept at all. He worries about if he’s okay, he worries that he’s having nightmares, and he worries about what the hell happened to him in the Galra ship. (He also worries about Keith’s reaction to his subtly coming out to him, but that’s not important.)

He replays the memory of sitting so _goddamn_ close to Keith on Keith’s bed over and over and over in his head until it drowns out the memory of the machine gun heavy in his hands, of blood and gunpowder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -disclaimer: i don't own voltron or any of the characters, this is my interpretation of a work of fiction and i'm just doing this for fun! fic title comes from california by kina grannis. (also there's a playlist for this fic i made you should totally check it out just sayin: https://playmoss.com/en/asterlark/playlist/itdlto-fic-playlist)
> 
> -TRANSLATIONS:  
>  _En nombre del Padre, del Hijo, del Espíritu Santo, amén_ = In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, amen  
>  _Te preocupas tanto, mijo. Mi chico bonito. Va a estar bien, lo prometo. Descansa un poco y vuelve a intentarlo mañana._ = You care so much, my son. My handsome boy. It's going to be fine, I promise. Rest a little and try again tomorrow.  
>  _Te amo, mamá. Te amo, te amo, me haces tanta falta que me duele, te amo._ = I love you, mama. I love you, I love you, I miss you so much it hurts, I love you.  
>  _Reanima mi espíritu cansado, quédate hoy conmigo"_ = Revive my tired spirit: be with me today.  
>  _Por favor, Dios, envíamelo de vuelta, por favor, por favor._ = Please, God, send him back to me, please, please.  
>  _Mierda_ = Shit  
>  _Lo que le es familiar, a lo que está acostumbrado._ = What is familiar, what he's accustomed to.  
>  _Carajo, su hombro duele_ = Fuck, his shoulder hurts  
>  _Ay, acabo de recibir un disparo, ¿recuerdas?_ = Hey, I just got shot, remember?  
>  _Lo siento._ = Sorry.
> 
> -i would really appreciate some kudos/comments on this!! feedback, positive or critical, is always welcome and since this is both my first voltron fic and the longest fic i've written i would really really appreciate it. thank you so much for reading!! (also check me out on tumblr if you want! asterlark.tumblr.com)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi again! another reminder, there's a lot of warnings to look at here so please be careful and take your own safety into account while reading! i'll put warnings before each chapter so you know what you're getting into. (i'm copy pasting notes from the last chapter because i'm lazy lol)
> 
> -i use they/them pronouns for pidge in this fic. i have my own reasons for it, so please don't harass me about that! if you really have questions you can send me an ask or message on tumblr about it. (asterlark.tumblr.com)
> 
> -there's no spanish in this chapter because somehow all of it ended up in the first chapter and the epilogue lol whoops! i'll have translations for the epilogue though! 
> 
> -WARNINGS IN THIS CHAPTER: insomnia, mentions of violence, PTSD flashbacks, discussions of anxiety/panic attacks, mentions of death, discussions of child abuse, discussions of homophobia, homophobic slurs, blood, mentions of gun use, panic attacks, nightmares, discussions of torture

If Lance weren’t already so jumpy from the last mission, he probably wouldn’t have heard the soft knock that sounds on his door in the liminal space between late night and early morning. As it stands, though, he does hear it, because he’s already lying awake debating if he should try to go back to sleep or just face the day at this ridiculously early hour. He’s about to get out of bed and find something to eat when it happens, and he furrows his brow. Who could be wanting to see him _now_?

He opens the door expecting Pidge demanding that he look at one of their new inventions, or maybe even Shiro, knowing he’d be up and wanting to eat breakfast together. It’s not either of them but Keith, looking tired but better somehow, cleaner. He must’ve taken a shower, and his newly longer hair looks shiny and soft.

Keith still looks so _small_ , though. He’s always been shorter than Lance, but since he returned he hasn’t stood to his full height like he usually does, instead slouching to make himself more drawn-in.

Lance is surprised to see him, but not as surprised as he’d be if they hadn’t shared that moment in Keith’s room earlier. A little glimmer of pride tugs at his stomach when he thinks that maybe Keith trusts him more than the rest of the team, at least right now; and isn’t that an interesting change from how things used to be.

“You okay?” he asks, and Keith flushes a bit, just the slightest shade of pink lighting up his cheekbones. He’s never seen Keith blush before, and honestly didn’t really believe it could happen because he’s always so fucking _smug_ , but this… this is nice.

“It’s my room,” Keith says in a small voice, “I-- it feels like. It feels like a cell.”

Lance’s heart breaks for him just a little more. Of course being in an enclosed room with not much in it would feel like he’d never gone home, just transferred to another, slightly nicer prison. Lance thought being with his things would help, but to be honest, Keith’s stuff is kind of depressing. Lance is a packrat, though, and collects random crap from every planet they visit. He has trinkets and alien snack food littered around his room, and he’d taken out the pictures of his family he’s always kept in his wallet and taped them to the wall so he could look at them before he fell asleep. It’s not home, but it’s as close as he can get. He wonders distantly if his room at home, his real home, is still messy or if it’s been cleaned since he… disappeared. His mom was always yelling at him to clean it, but organized chaos was how he worked best.

Keith sniffles slightly, bringing him back to the present. Right. Keith. Comforting him.

“You wanna hang out in here? I wasn’t sleeping anyway, it’s no biggie.”

Keith nods quickly, a little too quickly, and they sit on Lance’s bed together, a mirror of yesterday in Keith’s room. Lance is kind of hungry, so he grabs a packet of what appear to be jelly beans that he’d picked up a few missions ago off the floor and tears into it. Allura had read the package for him and told him it said they were supposed to be nutritious and filling, so it’s worth a shot.

He doesn’t get very far, though, because the candy tastes exactly like cabbage. He grimaces and holds the bag out to Keith. “These _suck_ , oh my God. You want one?”

Keith almost smiles, which Lance counts as a victory. “No, thanks.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right on that one. Ew.” He tosses a few more in his mouth anyway and sticks his tongue out. Candy should be universally sweet, and he feels robbed.

It’s quiet again after Lance tosses the gross candy to the ground, just breathing and the constant hum of the Castle’s engines, but after a few minutes Keith speaks up.

“Do you think… you could tell me another story?”

His voice is subdued, but it’s not like it’s been anything else since he returned. Lance almost misses his yelling and bitingly sarcastic comments. Almost.

He takes it as a good sign that Keith is asking for a story again; maybe that means he’s getting more comfortable asking for what he needs.

In any case, Lance loves telling stories. He smiles wide. “Yeah, sure. Um… Oh, okay. So my little brother Ray is the worst, he’s always bothering me and trying to get me in trouble with my parents, and I love him, but he’s nine. This one time when he was pretty little, I was watching over him in the family restaurant so my parents could work, and we were watching Hoarding: Buried Alive on my laptop… don’t ask me why. This really cute girl came in and I was about to say hi when Ray asks-- dear God.”

Lance laugh-groans at the embarrassing memory. “He asks if she’s a hoarder for some fucking child reason, but because he’s tiny and bad at talking, he pronounces it like _joder_. Which is ‘fuck’ in Spanish. He basically just asks this really cute girl I was gonna ask out if she’s a fuck. And man, it sounds funny, but she did _not_ think it was funny.”

When Lance looks to Keith he’s smiling, actually _smiling_ , and Lance’s grin grows even wider. He never thought it would feel so good to make Keith happy like this. He’ll tell story after stupid story if he can just put that expression on his face one more time.

Keith looks down at his shoes after a moment, though, the smile gone from his face. “That sounds nice,” he says, “Um. Having siblings and stuff. Even if they’re annoying.”

“It’s pretty cool,” Lance admits softly. “But, hey, you have siblings here. We’re all your family, man.”

Keith turns to look up at him, and his eyes are so big, _God_. What color are they, even? Blue? Gray? Lance wants to stare at them until he figures it out.

“Is that how you feel about me?” Keith asks, not breaking eye contact this time, and Lance’s heart stops. “Brotherly?”

“Um,” Lance replies, intelligently. He can feel his face start to flush, and it’s suddenly feeling very hot in his room, even though he knows the temperature is always regulated to suit the needs of whoever’s there. Him and Keith are so close, just like yesterday, their thighs pressed together firmly, and it feels like sticking a knife in a toaster. (Lance knows, because Pidge dared him to do it once in the Garrison kitchens.)

At that very fucking moment, because this is how Lance’s life works, there’s a knock at his door.

“Lance?”

It’s Shiro’s voice, and Lance wants to scream “ _not fucking now_ ” through the door, but. He can’t.

“Come in,” he calls instead, and to his dismay, Keith shifts just slightly enough on the bed to where their bodies are no longer touching.

Shiro looks surprised to see Keith, but not that surprised, like he kind of expects Keith to be in there. Lance feels something strange and defensive curl up hot in his gut. “I was just going to get breakfast,” Shiro says, “You two want to join me?”

Lance nods stiffly, rising from the mattress. And he doesn’t think Keith will want to come, but he’s already following Shiro from the room.

Keith doesn’t meet his eyes then, or at breakfast, or for the rest of the day. But at least Lance’s dreams that night are squeaking box springs and love bites instead of battle gore. (Dream Keith is really good in bed and it’s going to haunt Lance for the rest of his sad, gay life. His dream mouth was kissed raw and red and he can still feel it tingle when he wakes up.)

He can’t look at Keith either, the next morning.

  


\--

  


It’s been a week since Keith got back, and he seems slightly better, but he’s still… weird.

He flinches whenever anyone moves too fast or makes a sudden noise. He shies away completely from physical contact. Sometimes when someone tries to talk to him his expression is guarded, defensive, _hard_ , before he remembers they’re a friend, not the enemy. Lance thinks he still doesn’t trust any of them, not really. He just wishes he knew why.

Keith had been taking it easy the last week, just sleeping and trying to relax, but he seems really restless. Lance asks him one afternoon if he wants to spar, just for something to do; Keith looks hesitant, but nods.

It’s a little tense, because Keith’s rusty and Lance doesn’t want to scare or hurt him. But Keith has always been more talented than him, even in his current state. Even four months out of practice and worn down and tired. He can hold his own, and Lance finds himself sweating a little more than he was maybe expecting. 

He’s trying to be mostly on defense, not wanting Keith to get upset and think he’s being attacked, but it still all goes wrong somehow. Keith drops his sparring weapon suddenly, a stricken expression on his face. Lance drops his too, approaching Keith slowly with a hand extended in what he hopes is a show of support and goodwill.

Keith looks very far away, his eyes terrified and unfocused. Lance has no clue what to do-- should he go get Shiro, or would it be worse to leave Keith alone?

“Are you okay? What’s going on?” he asks, starting to get more worried as Keith’s breath comes in short bursts.

“I can’t be back here,” Keith says in a hushed voice, and Lance can see that he’s trembling. “I can’t be back, I-- This isn’t real, this can’t be real--”

Lance’s eyes go wide. Is he having a flashback? “Keith, whatever you’re seeing, it’s not real, okay? We’re in the Castle, in the training room, and you’re fine. You’re safe, okay? I’m here with you.”

Keith’s not looking at him. “Please don’t use them against me, not again, I can’t do it again--”

Lance has no clue what he’s supposed to be doing, but out of instinct, he grabs both of Keith’s hands in his own. “Listen to me, you’re right here, okay? You’re here with me, in the Castle, and no one bad is going to get you. I’m here, can you feel my hands?”

He squeezes, hard, and Keith looks down at his hands. He’s still trembling, but he seems a little more grounded in reality.

“Look around you, alright? It’s just the training room. You’re safe here, nothing’s going to get you here. I promise you.”

Keith looks around slowly at the walls, the patterning on the floor, the discarded sparring weapons. He still looks a little shaken. But at least he can look at Lance now.

They still haven’t let go of each other’s hands. “There you go,” Lance smiles. “You wanna breathe with me? Let’s breathe really slow.”

He talks Keith through breathing again, just like he did with the panic attack. He suspects this is something different, though-- he knows what panic attacks are usually like, and Keith had that far away look in his eyes like Shiro sometimes does.

When Keith seems a bit more settled, he looks up at Lance. “It felt really real. I felt like I was still in my cell, I--” He swallows, takes a breath. “Sometimes the guards would get bored and make us prisoners fight each other with these big bat things that, uh. They looked like these.”

He points at their sparring weapons on the ground, and Lance feels guilt pool up in his stomach. Of course sparring like this would remind him of being back there, he feels so _stupid_. Even if he didn’t know the specific situation, he should’ve known not to ask Keith to do something like this so early. He was just trying to help, to get Keith’s mind off of it… and then he had a flashback. Lance feels like no matter what, he can’t get it right.

“I’m so sorry,” he says sincerely, distinctly aware of his own hands still wrapped around Keith’s. “I made things worse, didn’t I?”

Keith shakes his head. “It’s okay. It could’ve been anything, it’s not your fault.”

There’s a still silence where they both don’t look at each other, and Lance finally breaks apart their hands. He feels weird that it lasted that long, and weirder that he didn’t mind it.

“Um,” he says, scratching the back of his head, “Do you want another story?”

Keith’s eyes widen in surprise, but he nods. They both sit down on the hard sparring room floor, and Lance scrambles to think of something to tell Keith. The very first thing to pop into his mind isn’t a _great_ idea to say, but he hasn’t got a better plan.

“You’ve probably guessed this, but I was always the class clown in school,” he starts, and Keith smirks knowingly. “Yeah. I was-- um, y’know, always trying to please everyone, always wanting to be friends with everyone, stuff like that. Enough to where I would legitimately feel terrible when someone didn’t laugh at my jokes, or when people weren’t my friends, or when my own friends would hang out without me. And not just regular terrible, like, _painful_ terrible.”

He takes a big, shaky breath. “And then, I was around twelve years old and I had my first panic attack, and it was at home, and my mom thought I was dying.” He laughs mirthlessly, and can feel Keith’s eyes on him. He resolutely ignores this fact. 

“I don’t know, it was terrifying. I couldn’t breathe and I was shaking and I was so fucking afraid and I thought I was gonna die. And my parents took me to the ER, and they told us it was a panic attack and gave us the number for a therapist, and on the very first meeting with my therapist she told us she thought I had anxiety. So it’s been a… fun journey. I actually applied for the Garrison to get out of my hellhole of a high school.” He laughs. “Little did I know I’d actually end up in fucking space, right? No anxiety meds while you’re traveling the cosmos.”

He chances a look at Keith for the first time, and Keith is looking at him with this wonderful mixture of validation and empathy, not pitying like so many others he’s tried to confide in over the years. He feels impossibly _known_ , and it awakens something warm and bright inside his chest.

“That sucks,” Keith says, drawing his legs up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. He looks so cute, and Lance wants to kiss him until they can’t feel their mouths. “I would get panic attacks sometimes, in, um.”

His expression is tight and uncomfortable, and Lance waits, knowing that sometimes you just need the space to think before you say something. 

“Can I tell you a story back?” he asks, very quietly, and Lance nods. He doesn’t know what he’s about to learn, but Keith has never really voluntarily given information about himself before, so it must be special.

“I don’t know if anyone told you, at the Garrison or anything, but I don’t… have parents. They died when I was eight.”

Lance sucks in a breath. He’d heard rumors about Keith’s fucked up home life, but he could never be sure that they were true. Kids can be really cruel. “That’s… Keith, I’m sorry.”

Keith isn’t looking at him. His face is steely and sharp, hiding any possible emotion beneath the surface. He shrugs. “I was the only one who survived the car crash. I was in the hospital for a few days, and then some lady came and took me to a foster family. Nobody wanted some eight-year-old kid with baggage, though, so most places only lasted a couple months. If I was lucky, it’d be a year. But never longer than that.”

He clenches his jaw and continues. “And then I got into the Garrison, and I thought everything would be better from then on. No foster families to deal with, and I was _good_ at something for once. But Iverson… He was just like this foster dad I’d had. Cold and mean and no mercy. The foster dad, he was always telling me stuff I was doing was gay. My hair was gay, my clothes were gay, and if I didn’t shape up and get a girlfriend all the guys at school were gonna think I was a faggot. The first time he hit me, he was calling me a sissy because I was having a panic attack and I couldn’t breathe. So when Iverson told me to stop being a sissy during one of the drills, I just… lost it. And they kicked me out. Didn’t help that they’d just announced the Kerberos mission had gone wrong and everyone was talking about how sad it was that Shiro was dead.”

Keith stares at the floor, mouth set in a hard line, remembering, and-- yeah, Lance remembers that time, too. He’d been so heartbroken, and he’d hadn’t even met Shiro in person at that point. But his hero was gone, and the Garrison felt quiet and sad for so long afterwards. He can’t even imagine how hard it’d been for Keith, who’d actually been friends with Shiro beforehand. He recalls thinking about the peculiarity of mourning someone only to be next to them again after they’d rescued Keith, and realizes for the first time that Keith is no stranger to that feeling.

A few moments of shared silence later, Lance asks softly, “What happened with the foster dad?”

Keith laughs, no humor in it whatsoever. “He and his wife got me out of there real fast after they found out I actually was gay. Didn’t want a fag living under their roof, taking advantage of their kindness. Or whatever.”

“Keith,” Lance says tenderly, unsure of what else to say. He’s trying desperately not to latch on to the part of the story where Keith is gay; he’d suspected, especially because of his and Shiro’s conversation while Keith was still in the healing pod, but it hadn’t been confirmed. A hopeful anxious flutter starts up in his chest and he presses it back down. This is not about that. This is about Keith and sharing painful truths and trusting each other with the hard shit. Keith looks at him and quickly looks back away.

“Sorry, that was too much,” he says in a rush, standing up and brushing his pants off; once again the closed-off and distant version of himself. “You don’t wanna hear my sob story.”

Lance’s heart sinks; of course he wants to listen to Keith. He always does. He stands up, too, facing Keith.

“Hey, no-- thank you for telling me that. I told you something personal, it’s a trade. We’re even now.”

Keith nods, brushing his hair back from his face. He looks like he needs some food and a ten-year-long nap. For all he’s been resting lately, it still hasn’t really done much. The dark circles under his eyes are present as ever, making him look even more pale. Lance finds himself looking at Keith’s hair again; the length really suits him. At least he doesn’t have a mullet anymore.

He touches a small strand of Keith’s hair. They’re standing pretty close to each other. “It’s longer, now. Do you think you’re gonna keep it?”

Keith frowns, like the question had only just occurred to him. “I dunno. Do you think it looks good?”

He glances up at Lance, eyes big and shining, and Lance’s stupid heart skips a beat.

“Yeah,” he says, much too quickly, “Yeah, it, um. I like it. Suits you.”

The corner of Keith’s mouth quirks up a little in an near-smile that has Lance’s whole body feeling tingly. He never thought making Keith smile would feel this good.

“Thanks,” Keith says, sincere as ever. “We should go eat, probably. That was… tiring.”

Lance nods furiously; his stomach is grumbling something fierce. “God, yeah, I could eat like, three whole plates of goo right now.”

Keith shakes his head, a small, teasing smile on his face, and in that moment he almost seems like he’s back to normal. Almost like himself.

When they get to the kitchen area, everyone’s already there eating what is, at this point, a late lunch. They all seem happy to see Keith up and about, not eating by himself in various hiding spots around the Castle.

“Keith, my man!” Hunk grins, pulling out a chair for him. Keith sits and serves himself a plate with a shaky smile.

“How did sparring go, guys?” Pidge asks, in between bites of goo.

Lance freezes when the serving utensil is halfway to his plate and glances awkwardly at Keith. He’s not sure how much of it he should tell, if any. It’s Keith’s information to share, not his.

“Um,” Keith coughs, eyes staring steadily down at the table, “Not well.”

Shiro immediately looks concerned, a deep frown on his face. “Why not? If you don’t mind me asking.”

Keith still isn’t looking at anyone, but nods. Lance hastily makes his plate and sits down, not wanting to be still weirdly standing when Keith starts talking.

“It was fine at first, but I kind of freaked out?” Keith winces. “I started remembering… that place, and it felt really real. Lance helped, though.”

He looks up at Lance, smiling his small, hesitant smile, and Lance feels his dumb heart seize up for a moment. He supposes they’re not going to talk about what happened after Keith had calmed down, which is completely fine with him-- he’s not really ready for the rest of the team to know about him, either. When he looks away from Keith and over to Shiro, their leader’s frown has only gotten worse.

“Do you think it might’ve been a flashback?” he asks. By the look on his face, Lance guesses he gets them, too.

Keith seems uncomfortable to be having this conversation in front of everyone. “I mean… yeah, seems so. It felt like I was back there, for real.”

Shiro looks heartbroken for him, and it hurts Lance to watch. “I’m so sorry,” Shiro says in an almost-whisper, shaking his head. Lance knows he’s blaming himself right now, which is just wrong and unfair, and he can’t do it.

“Is there anything the rest of us can do to help?” Lance asks Keith fiercely, sincerely, and Keith looks a little taken aback.

“Um. Whatever I can do to feel grounded and real? That would help. And I don’t… sleeping in my room alone is hard.” He looks embarrassed to be saying this, but Lance is so relieved to have something to work with, something he can use to try and be a comfort to Keith.

“Anything we can do to help,” Hunk says, voice soft and a small smile on his face. “We just want you to feel safe.”

Everyone nods seriously, all in agreement. Keith looks overwhelmed, but not in a bad way like the other day. He looks like how Lance always felt on birthdays when his family would sing for him before he blew the candles out; embarrassed by all the love.

“We could put you in a different room if you’d like,” Allura offers kindly.

Pidge gasps with a sudden idea. “Or! We could all camp out in one of the big rooms, like a slumber party!”

Hunk and Lance meet eyes, grinning, and Pidge is bouncing up and down in their seat, and Keith is even smiling, and they all turn towards Shiro, who just shrugs.

“Why are you all looking at me like I’m gonna say no? A slumber party sounds fun.” The corner of his mouth quirks up in that fond, teasing way he has, and Lance feels so grateful for him.

Coran and Pidge are animatedly planning the slumber party details while Hunk tries to figure out if he can make some sort of popcorn out of the food they have in the Castle. Keith is just observing everyone else, looking happy in a quiet, tired sort of way. He meets Lance’s eyes and smiles, and for the first time since Keith was taken, Lance thinks everything might turn out okay.

  


\--

  


Things are good. 

Well, maybe. Lance thinks so, at least. Keith seems to trust him, even if he’s still a little wary around the rest of the team. He doesn’t flinch as much as he used to and he’s gotten a bit more adjusted the regular, chaotic atmosphere of a bunch of young people (and a couple super-old aliens) living together. 

He thinks sleeping in a room together has helped Keith a lot; he’s getting more sleep, and he looks healthier physically, if not… mentally or emotionally. He’s still holding himself back, though, and even though it’s been weeks, he still hasn’t explained what happened to him on that Galra ship.

Lance knows it’ll take time, and he’s okay with that. He wants Keith to be alright much, much more than he wants to know what happened. But he still wishes he knew, because at least then he’d have more of a direction, a more solid way to help. For now it’s telling Keith stories from his childhood and grounding him and trying his best to make him smile. Those are the best moments, when he smiles.

They slowly start to make everything normal again. Keith’s first mission after he gets back is sooner than they all expected, but he insists that he’s ready for this, that he wants to go.

“I’m going nuts just sitting around all day,” he says after they push the issue, “I need to be productive. I’ll be fine.”

And he _is_ fine, but Lance thinks it’s mostly because the mission isn’t too long or complicated or stressful. Not that he doesn’t have faith in Keith’s abilities-- this is _Keith_ , after all, fucking top of his class and all that-- but Lance himself still gets anxious when he has to use his bayard because of what happened when they rescued Keith. He still can’t get the sound of that machine gun out of his head, or the sight of all those dead soldiers, or the smell of them, soaked in blood. He can’t even imagine what it must be like for Keith to see Galra ships again after having been trapped in one for almost four months.

But Keith’s okay, like he said he’d be. He’s jumpy and anxious, but that’s to be expected, and the team checks in with him over the comms every few minutes. The Galra fleet they’re fighting isn’t very large since they’d only just started to occupy the planet, and the very militant locals have done a pretty good job of protecting themselves so far.

The mission doesn’t take too long, all in all, and Lance is a little too relieved when it’s over and they’re back in the Castle, looking each other up and down and checking for injuries. No one is hurt other than some cuts and scrapes from being jostled around their Lions’ cockpits, but Keith still seems pretty rattled.

“You okay?” Lance asks, voice quiet as everyone else laughs and bickers while taking off their suits. “It was too soon, wasn’t it? I knew it, it’s only been a few weeks since you got back, we shouldn’t have--”

“Lance,” Keith interrupts, and sighs. “It’s not that. I-- I got confused, in the middle of the battle, and I nearly shot the wrong ship. I couldn’t keep track of what was real or not again, and I almost blasted Hunk. I can’t…” 

He shakes his head, looking down at his feet. His hair is messy and sweaty from being in a helmet, and it’s falling out of its ponytail, but Lance still thinks it looks amazing. _He_ looks amazing.

“What if I hurt someone because I’m… because I’m crazy now? Or… more crazy than I used to be, I guess. I couldn’t live with myself, Lance.”

He looks up at Lance then, his eyes wide and pleading, and Lance has another one of those moments where he wonders how the hell he got to be the one Keith trusts the most. It shouldn’t have been him, from all accounts. It should have been Shiro or Hunk or anyone but him. 

But here they are.

Lance takes a deep breath, exhales. “Hey, you’re not crazy. You have trauma, man, just like Shiro, d’you think he’s crazy?”

Keith shakes his head and looks back to the ground.

“I mean, I take personal offense to that word anyway, considering the anxiety, but…” 

Lance shrugs, sighs. He wasn’t trying to make it about himself, but he always seems to do that.

“Listen,” he says, and puts a careful hand on Keith’s shoulder. He doesn’t flinch away, which Lance is glad for. “Whether you were born with it or not, it’s okay. It’s okay to feel whatever you’re feeling and to be scared and all that. I’m here, and I got you, alright?”

Keith is looking at him again, eyes big and trusting, and he shakes his head, letting out a long sigh. “I-- thanks.”

Lance’s heart does the stupid twinge thing but he doesn’t have time to dwell on it because they’re being rallied into dinner by the rest of the team. He smiles at Keith apologetically, hoping to convey that they can continue the conversation later.

Keith nods, and Lance notices a strand of his hair sticking to his sweaty forehead, so he mumbles, “You’ve got…” and brushes it away. And there’s Keith’s flush again, stark pink against the white of his scar and breathtaking next to his ambiguously blue eyes. They’re standing too close, Lance knows, and the rest of the team is about to go eat, and Keith is looking at him, and this is… weird. It’s weird.

He snaps to himself, hastily stepping a few feet away to put distance between them. Pidge coughs very un-subtlely, and both Lance and Keith look over, probably with identical bright-red cheeks.

“Dinner?” Hunk says for what is most likely the second or third time, judging by the smirk on his face. Lance nods quickly and starts marching down the hallway to the kitchens, the team cackling and squealing behind him.

  


\--

  


Lance wasn’t sure when they’d all find out what exactly happened to Keith during his time in captivity, but he definitely wasn’t expecting it to happen like this.

He’s awoken in the middle of the night by a shouted exclamation from the room next to his, and his heart immediately jumps into his throat-- _Keith_. 

He jolts up and scrambles out of bed, at Keith’s door in seconds, and it’s already slightly open. He can hear voices inside, but he can’t make them out. Everyone else seems to have heard the noise, because the rest of the doors are opening, sleepy team members shuffling out of their rooms in confusion. Lance pushes his hand on the door just enough for it to swing fully open, and finds Keith and Pidge inside, blood rushing from Pidge’s nose.

Keith’s eyes are blown wide, completely terrified, and his hands keep switching between covering his mouth in horror and reaching out in an attempt to be comforting. Pidge has one of their hands on their nose and their face tilted slightly forward, looking in pain but otherwise not much bothered.

“What the fuck happened?” Lance asks, looking between the two in confusion and concern. The rest of the team files in, and Shiro rushes over to Pidge as soon as he sees the blood.

He murmurs something to Pidge, worry all over his face, and Pidge nods. He narrows his eyes and turns quickly to Keith, looking ready to activate his arm’s weapon.

“What did you do,” Shiro says, voice quiet but hard, and it’s not a question but rather a demand, an expectation. Keith’s hands fist in his hair, and he looks like he’s living a nightmare.

His breath is heavy and out of control when he answers. “Oh God, I’m so sorry, oh God, oh God-- it was an accident, I swear, oh _God_ \--”

Lance pushes through the rest of the team to sit next to Keith, and Hunk seems to get the idea, because he takes Keith’s opposite side and starts rubbing his back. This makes Lance nervous, since physical contact has never seemed to help Keith during panic attacks before, but he doesn’t shy away this time, so it must be okay.

“Why don’t you tell us what happened?” Hunk asks, firmly but not unkindly.

Keith nods, but his hands are still in his hair, knuckles white. “I-- I was having a nightmare, I think, and I woke up suddenly and Pidge’s face was right in front of me, and I was so scared and out of it that I just-- I _reacted_ , I didn’t want to hurt them, I promise, I _swear_ \--”

His breathing is so erratic it’s scaring Lance, and he can tell that he’s having another panic attack, a really bad one this time.

“Is that what happened, Pidge?” Shiro asks, meeting their eyes. They nod, sighing. 

“I heard him from my room and I just wanted to make sure he was okay, I’m fine, it’s all fine, he didn’t lunge at me or anything. I would’ve punched me too.” Their voice sounds funny from the blood clogging up their nose, and they cough.

Coran _tsks_ , walking over to give Pidge’s nose a look. “It’s most likely broken,” he says, “We should go make sure it’s not out of place. Come on, now.”

Pidge sighs but follows Coran to the infirmary, leaving the rest of them in Keith’s room where an uncomfortable silence has fallen. Everyone looks a weird mixture of upset and pitying, except Shiro, who just seems tired and sort of mad. Lance knows he tries very hard to protect all of them, especially Pidge, but Keith isn’t some enemy he can just destroy. He’s another member of the team, and it’s not really his fault.

Shiro sighs and crosses his arms. “I don’t want to push you,” he says, and his voice is gentler than Lance would’ve expected, “But I think it’s time you told us what happened to you.”

“Shiro,” Hunk protests, warning. “Let him breathe first.”

Keith’s breath is still coming in sharp bursts, and he looks desperate to calm down but not sure of how to go about it. His hands are on his thighs, now, gripping tightly, and Lance expects he’s trying to ground himself. He places a hand over Keith’s free one and squeezes, and Keith’s muscles relax ever so slightly.

It’s quiet for a few moments, then Keith takes a shaky breath. “It’s fine. I owe this to you all. I-- um. They had me in the same cell you found me in for however long I was there--”

“Three and a half months, almost four,” Lance interrupts, feeling guilt and sadness weighing heavy inside him. “Did you really not know how long it was?”

“It’s not like they have clocks in alien jail,” Keith says, managing a tepid smile. Their hands are still touching and Keith feels warm and solid next to him. He nods to signal Keith to keep talking. 

“Anyway, um. At first nothing much happened-- they didn’t feed us much or treat us well but I kind of expected that. But after a little while, they…”

He trails off, shifting uncomfortably on the bed. Lance squeezes his hand again, properly intertwining their fingers this time. He can sense everyone watching this exchange, but he couldn’t give less of a shit as long as it makes Keith feel better.

Keith squeezes back, hard, and keeps squeezing as he continues to talk, like he needs an anchor to stay in the present. “They would pretend to be all of you. I don’t know how. Probably that witch lady cooking some transformation magic up or something.”

He says this all in a rush, like he’d lose his nerve if he didn’t. The air in the room is still and static, and Lance feels like he has no breath left in his lungs.

“The Galra… can look like anyone now?” Shiro asks, voice tight with fear and shock, expressing what they were all thinking.

Allura shakes her head, looking upset and tired in the bone-deep way that comes with fighting a war for a long, long time. “I can’t believe it. No matter what we do, they only keep creating new ways to beat us.”

Lance looks at Keith. His heartbreak and sadness and anger are flaring anew in his chest, and it _hurts_. “What would they… do? Or say? As us, I mean.”

Keith shifts on the bed again, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. “They’d tell me they were rescuing me. That… it was going to be okay. And then they’d…” 

He gestures, with the hand not entwined in Lance’s, to his scars, clearly not wanting to tell all the gory details of his torture out loud. “They were trying to get information out of me, I think.”

Allura speaks up almost immediately, concern lacing her voice. “What did you tell them?”

“Allura,” Shiro warns, eyebrows furrowed.

“I’m sorry,” she replies, turning to Keith, “but if they’ve learned anything, that’s something we need to be made aware of.”

“I didn’t tell them anything,” Keith says, looking vaguely offended, and Lance almost smirks. There’s the Keith he knows.

Allura’s eyes widen in surprise and what seems to be admiration. “Oh. Well then. Thank you, Keith, that was extremely brave of you. I’m terribly sorry you were put through that entire vile experience, but at least you’re back here in one piece.”

“Yeah,” is all Keith replies, looking down at his lap, and Lance hears bitterness in his voice. He didn’t return entirely in one piece, after all; if he did, he wouldn’t have PTSD.

“How many times?” Shiro asks suddenly, startling all of them.

Keith’s head snaps up. “What?”

Shiro is insistent, focused. “How many times did they do that to you?” 

“I don’t know,” Keith says, thinking. He sighs. “It was hard to keep track of time in there, but they did it a lot. Maybe every other day? I’m not sure.”

“They were trying to make you distrustful of us. And scared of us,” Shiro says, sounding sick, and the realization dawns on the rest of them, too. “They’re trying to take our team down from the inside.”

“And I’m the catalyst,” Keith says, quietly awed, “For this whole thing falling apart. Oh, my God.”

He looks like he’s about to start panicking again, so Lance squeezes his hand tight. He feels nauseated from how terrible the Galra were to Keith, how badly they hurt him. He wants to punch every single Galra soldier in the… well, wherever it hurts them most.

“Hey, no,” he says fiercely, “We’re not falling apart. We’re all standing here talking it through, aren’t we? We’re gonna be fine.”

Hunk chimes in, “Yeah, dude, don’t worry. We’re not gonna let some Galra mind games screw with us, you’re our friend.”

“Thanks,” Keith replies, and Lance can tell he has more to say but doesn’t know how to say it. “Uh, I’m kind of tired, actually, do you think you all could…?”

Everyone starts a bit with the realization that they’re all just standing in Keith’s room in the middle of the night, and that they should go back to sleep, too.

“Of course,” Allura says, “Thank you for your honesty and your bravery, Keith. We are all grateful.”

They all nod and voice their assents, and Keith just ducks his head. When everyone else starts filing out of the room Lance takes that as his cue to leave, but Keith doesn’t let go of his hand.

He looks down at their hands and back to Keith’s face in confusion, only to notice the pink coloring his cheeks.

“Not you,” Keith says, and now Lance knows he’s blushing, too.

Shiro’s the last one out and gives Lance a significant look, a mix between “ _please make sure he’s okay_ ” and “ _told you he liked you back ha ha ha I’m Shiro and I’m a smug bastard._ ” Lance sticks his tongue out at him and he can hear Shiro’s muffled laughter in the hallway a moment later.

Lance and Keith’s hands have been linked for so long they’ve gone clammy, but no way is Lance letting go now. He rubs his thumb along the edge of Keith’s hand in what he hopes is a comforting gesture.

“You alright? That was pretty intense.”

Keith takes a minute to think, and eventually nods. “Yeah. I dunno. I’m just… they turned me into a weapon. And it feels like I can’t trust myself.”

“If it helps, I trust you,” Lance says. He can feel Keith’s thigh against him, warm and muscled and firm. They’re sitting so close on this bed together, and Lance almost laughs. This is becoming a pattern for them.

Lance waits to say anything more, because Keith is staring at the ground and chewing his lip, and he can tell there’s something else on his mind. He’s right, because a few moments later Keith speaks.

“It’s just-- I know what it feels like to, um…” Keith is resolutely not looking at him. “I know what it feels like to get hit by someone you’re supposed to trust. And I couldn’t stand it if Pidge was scared of me like I-- like I’ve been scared.”

Lance remembers the conversation they had the other day, and it feels like his heart is being wrung out like a wet towel. He can’t believe anyone would want to hurt Keith like that and make him live with the scars-- emotional and physical-- for years and years afterwards. He thinks about his own family, and how incredibly lucky he is to be supported, accepted, loved. It’s unconditional, and he never even questioned that. He just took it for granted.

He clutches Keith’s hand even tighter than before, and he sees a tear roll down Keith’s cheek. He feels a pang of incredulity at that manly single tear; of course even his crying is composed and cool, because Keith is always cool, even in emotional moments. Lance, on the other hand, cries like an ugly baby.

“Hey,” he replies, softly, “Pidge is fine. They love you, and they trust you, and I’ve never known them to be scared of anything besides losing the people they care about. You included. I mean, I’d probably talk to them later just to be safe, but it’ll be okay. You’re not-- you’re not like that. You would never do that on purpose, and Pidge knows that.”

Keith nods a little, hesitant, and wipes his face on his free arm’s sleeve. “I… okay. Thanks.”

Neither of them says anything for a while, until Lance asks, “When did you stop believing it was us? In the Galra ship?”

Keith answers immediately, all traces of hesitation gone. “I didn’t.”

Lance looks at him, once again in awe of this boy sitting next to him, and Keith looks back, eyes still shining in the dim room. “It was so hard to tell what was real. I thought I was hallucinating for a while, until one of the prisoners across the way made a comment about the, um… the scar on my face. But I couldn’t really give up that last little piece of hope, no matter what. It felt like--”

Keith flushes again, and Lance feels his heart jump into his throat.

“What?”

“It felt like you,” Keith says. His eyes haven’t looked away from Lance’s yet. “It felt like what you’d do.”

Their faces are excruciatingly close, close enough that Lance can feel Keith’s warm exhale on his cheek. Close enough that when Lance sucks in a breath, Keith’s eyes dart down to his lips.

It’s not soft, when their lips meet; Keith’s lips are chapped and he needs a shave. But it’s gentle, and that’s what matters. It’s like tiptoeing around the house at night as to not wake a sleeping baby, like cradling a small animal. It’s comforting, and safe, and it’s nothing like Lance imagined.

When they break apart, Lance realizes his hands have somehow found their way to cup Keith’s cheeks. He doesn’t mind, not at all, but he takes them down in case Keith does.

“That was…” he tries, and discovers that he doesn’t have the words. He needs a thesaurus for that kiss. Good, great, amazing, _life-changing._

Keith just nods, but his little smile says it all. Lance has never seen him smile like that for anyone.

“I actually am tired now,” Keith admits, his mouth still quirked up at the edges like he’s about to laugh, or he just stopped. Lance wants to take a picture of that smile, wants to hang it on his wall amongst all the pictures of his family. Everything he cares about in one place.

“Yeah, me too,” Lance replies, “Beauty sleep, and all that. Not that you need it, or anything.”

His eyes widen a millisecond later when he realizes what he’s implying, and he almost groans in embarrassment, but Keith just laughs good-naturedly.

“Thanks,” he says. Will he ever stop assaulting Lance with that smile of his? Lance hopes not. “I… that was nice. I needed that.”

Lance says, “Same here.” They smile at each other for another stupid, happy moment before Lance begrudgingly stands up, breaking contact with Keith’s body. He feels cold from the lack of it.

“I’ll… we’ll talk?” he asks nervously. He has no clue how Keith felt about all that, or how Keith feels about him in general, but they should probably work all that out. 

Keith nods, already settling down under his covers. He yawns, which might be the cutest fucking thing ever, and smiles at Lance.

“Night,” he says, quiet and sleepy and kind, and Lance smiles back.

“Night.”

He shuts the door behind him and gives himself a few seconds to close his eyes and grin like a dope and think about how fucking _good_ that was. Who knew one kiss could turn him into such a lovesick idiot?

Pidge is directly in front of him when he opens his eyes, their nose covered in a bright blue bandage. They have dried blood on their shirt and they’re smirking.

“What were you up to in there?” they ask, their eyebrows halfway up their forehead. Lance feels his face heat immediately.

“Go to bed, Pidge,” he mutters, speed-walking to his own door. He hears Pidge snickering from behind him and feels a weird mixture of embarrassed and happy and worried and stupid.

Happy wins out, though, because he spends at least an hour grinning at his ceiling before he’s calmed down enough to fall asleep.

  


\--

  


Life returns almost to normal-- or at least, their ridiculous space adventure version of normal. They go on missions, eat meals, hang out, sleep, strategize. Pidge and Hunk tinker, Lance cracks jokes, Shiro smiles his exasperated smile. And Keith seems to be better than before, having his experience with the Galra out in the open. The dust is settling, finally, and everything seems hesitantly okay.

Except, Keith and Lance still haven’t talked.

It’s been days, and the only time they’ve gotten remotely close to discussing the kiss was when Lance had knocked on Keith’s door after a nightmare and asked if he could sleep in his room. Keith was already awake, his own respective anxieties keeping him up, and they lay in the same small bed together, sharing warmth and oxygen until they could both fall back asleep. They’d woken up closer than they’d been previously, and both had elected to not mention it whatsoever. Keith’s sleepy promise to talk about what happened had clearly been forgotten.

They’re already awkward, but it gets even worse. Lance has no idea what their relationship is now, so he has no idea how to act around him. He drops a bowl he’s holding when Keith walks into the room. He forgets what he’s saying whenever Keith meets his eyes. If Keith ever accidentally brushes against him, he feels stiff and tingly inside. It’s ridiculous. He’s ridiculous.

Keith, however, doesn’t seem to be too affected. It’s not like he’s ever too outwardly expressionate about his emotions, but he seems particularly closed-off lately. Lance doesn’t know why he’s being all aloof and mysterious; it could be that something’s actually wrong, but he thinks it’s most likely Keith not knowing how to tell Lance that he doesn’t want to date him. If it’s that, he’d rather just be rejected to his face instead of Keith slowly letting him know that he doesn’t give a shit about him. That hurts so much worse.

It gets weird enough between them that it interferes with missions, which is, needless to say, not fucking good. They’re liberating a swamp-like planet from the Galra one day, and the fleet is sizeable enough that they’re struggling to keep everything contained. The heat hangs heavy over all of them like a wool blanket, and Lance seems to be the only one embracing it. It reminds him of summers in Cuba, the humidity frizzing his hair and making him want to spend all his time in the water.

Right now, though, the heat serves as an extra agitator to the already frustrated team. It’s sweat and guns and chaos instead of beaches and surfboards.

“Do we even have a plan right now?” Hunk shouts, using his Lion’s heavily armored body to slam two Galra ships into each other.

“The plan is to shoot,” Shiro barks back, obviously frustrated, and sighs sharply after a moment. “You’re right, there’s no plan as of now. Allura, how’s it looking from up there? Should we form Voltron?”

Allura and Coran are stationed in the Castle, staying mostly away from the action but planning to step in if necessary. Her voice comes through the comms a second later. “Well, it’s certainly not going… perfectly. Forming Voltron is most likely the best strategy we have right now.”

“Do we have time for that?” Pidge replies, voice on edge. Lance sees them dodge a large blast out of the corner of his eye and winces.

Hunk snorts. “Never stopped us before.”

“Alright then, team, form Voltron!” Shiro shouts back. 

Lance closes his eyes, lets his thoughts subside and become one with his Lion and his team, everything else falling away. Well, mostly everything. He can feel Keith more than he usually can, and it’s distracting. He’s been pretty quiet this whole mission, but now it feels like he’s prodding Lance’s brain with a stick.

He can tell the connection is unstable the entire time they’re forming Voltron, and it feels shaky and wrong once they’re all one and back on the planet’s swampy earth.

“Everyone else feel that?” Hunk says, uneasy.

“Yeah, what’s going on?” Pidge replies.

Lance’s head _hurts_. He has no clue what Keith is up to in his own head, but it feels bad in his skull, like a negative, nervous energy. 

“Keith, stop it,” he murmurs, hoping it’s soft enough for the team not to hear. He forgets that they’re all connected, because he’s a total idiot.

“What? What’s he doing?” Hunk asks, sounding both worried and nervous.

It feels like a buzzing in Lance’s head, a raw, unpleasant emotion. “ _Keith_.”

“ _You_ stop!” Keith replies angrily, defensively, and Lance can feel the connection between all of them wobble. 

“I’m not doing anything!” Lance shouts, and a blast from a Galra ship hits them square in the shoulder, hard. They stagger back and both Shiro and Pidge grunt in pain.

“Whatever’s going on, you both need to _figure it out_ ,” Shiro says through gritted teeth. “We have a planet to save, remember?”

“I’m not-- it’s _him_!” Keith yells, and suddenly, without warning, everything falls apart.

There’s a lot of blinding, white light and screeching metal and screams through the comms. Lance feels himself falling but he’s not completely in control of himself yet, so there’s not much he can do. His impact with the ground is pretty brutal, and he feels Blue mentally yelling at him.

“I know,” he says, opening his eyes one at a time. “I know, Blue.”

Everything seems to be still mostly in working order; or at least, he can drag him and Blue through the rest of the mission. They’re both going to be pretty scraped up after it, that’s all.

“Everyone else okay?” he asks, and they all mutter back their assent, except Keith.

Lance frowns. “Keith? What the hell was that?”

He hears Keith sigh. “I don’t know, but right now we need to figure out how to help these people.”

“Well, since forming Voltron didn’t work, Plan A still stands,” Shiro says, voice strained but determined. “Shoot ‘till there’s nothing left.”

The battle is tough, one of the tougher ones they’ve had. The fleet is sizeable and merciless, and since they’re unable to form Voltron, there’s no quick-fix to end the fight. Just grit and pain and anger and resilience, and trying to be stronger than the other side.

They win after hours of fighting hard and dirty, and when the amphibian-looking locals want to throw them a party, they’re all of the same mind for once: go home and rest. Not even Lance wants a celebration right now. They limp back to the Castle, battered and exhausted, their Lions in serious need of repairs.

When they’re all getting changed back into street clothes in their paladin version of a locker room, Lance remembers the connection problems from earlier and anger flares up like a firework in his gut.

He catches Keith in the middle of putting his boots on and stands there with his hands on his hips until Keith turns to look at him. His hair is matted to his forehead and he looks very tired.

“What,” he says flatly.

Lance huffs. “You wanna tell me what the hell that was about back there?”

“I don’t know, Lance,” Keith replies, and Lance can tell he’s trying-- and failing-- to contain his own anger.

“Sure you don’t,” Lance says, crossing his arms. “We almost _died_ , Keith.”

Keith finishes zipping up his boots and stands to his full height, only slightly shorter than Lance. He’s still pretty intimidating, especially now, with his angry face on.

“You’re acting like this is all my fault,” Keith says, his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth in a hard line.

“Maybe because it _is_.”

“You were in my head!”

“We were all in each other’s heads! That’s how it _works_ , moron!”

Keith sighs sharply, visibly frustrated. “That’s not-- you _hurt_ in my head. I didn’t-- I don’t want you in there.”

Lance remembers his head hurting from the fight, then the kiss from almost a week ago, and his stomach tightens and he becomes even more angry at the thought of Keith running from him. 

He doesn’t expect it to be, but his voice is at a shout when he replies, “What are you so afraid of!”

At this point, he becomes very aware that everyone else has left the room. He should’ve guessed that no one would want to be around their fighting after that exhausting battle, but it still feels surprising, and very vulnerable.

Keith is just looking at him in that way he does, bare and unfiltered, like no one ever taught him direct eye contact makes people uncomfortable. Maybe no one did.

“I’m…” He huffs, looks away, looks back. “I’m afraid of you. Of this.” 

Lance’s stomach tightens in a completely different way. He thinks back to the other kiss, how they’d just finished having a very serious conversation when it happened. How close they are now, like before. He wonders if they’ll ever have a normal romantic moment, or if it’ll only ever come after fights or deep confessions.

When Keith steps closer to him, officially breathing the same air and taking up the same space, Lance puts a finger on his lips.

“Wait,” he says, “Wait. If we’re gonna kiss again, I wanna talk about it this time.”

Keith rolls his eyes, but nods. Lance elects to ignore his bitchy attitude. He takes his finger off Keith’s mouth.

“Okay, so… What do you want?” 

Keith blinks. “To the point. Um. I want to kiss you? And stuff? Oh, Christ.”

His cheeks are starting to turn pink, dark against his scar. Lance can feel his own face start to get hot, too.

“And like… be boyfriends?” Lance asks, trying not to be too hopeful.

Keith is fully red at this point. “Oh, um. Wow. That would be… good.”

Lance can’t help his own grin. It stretches his whole face and makes Keith smile too.

“Okay,” Lance says, reaching out and taking Keith’s hand. “Boyfriends.”

“Boyfriends,” Keith agrees, his face red and his smile quiet and fond, the gorgeous one Lance is lucky to be used to by now.

After a moment of grinning stupidly at each other, Lance remembers something. “Is that what was going on, when we fell apart in the battle?”

Keith nods. “I mean, if Voltron is all about communication, it makes sense that a miscommunication between us would make everything go wrong.”

Lance balks. “Oh… I guess we gotta be really good boyfriends then.”

“We’ll be the best,” Keith replies. He still looks scared, but more competitive than anything. Lance almost laughs; of course Keith would need to compete to be the best boyfriends when they literally don’t know any other couples.

Lance thinks for a second. “Is this a good idea? We’re both, like… pretty fucked up.”

Keith just shrugs. “So’s everyone.” 

He brings Lance closer to him with one hand on each of Lance’s hips and looks up at his face. “We’ll be fine,” he says, “Right?”

“Right,” Lance says softly, and they’re kissing for the second time, happy and gentle and sweaty and relieved. Lance only breaks them apart when he can hear faint shouting from his helmet’s comm on the bench a few feet away. He huffs a sigh.

“So I guess they heard that.” (More hollering.)

Keith just smiles, wide and big and rare. “I don’t care if you don’t.” His eyes dart down to Lance's lips and they kiss again. And again. And again.

Lance pulls away. “Weren’t we fighting, like, two minutes ago?”

Keith shakes his head, exasperated but fond, and says, “Do you ever shut up?”

He would be offended except he knows Keith doesn’t really mean it, and the less he talks the more they can kiss anyway. And Keith is a _very good kisser._

When someone finally re-enters the locker room to make sure they’re not dead, Keith has Lance pressed up against the wall and Lance’s hands are fisted in Keith’s long hair and they’re definitely not being PG-13. From the awkward cough alone, Lance can tell it’s Shiro standing in the doorway.

They de-tangle from each other and Shiro is pointedly not looking at either of them, but still has a stupid smirk on his face. “Dinner’s ready,” he says, and Lance can hear the teasing in his voice, “Take your time.”

He leaves again, and Keith and Lance meet eyes. Keith’s face is painfully red, and Lance knows his own matches in shade. But surprisingly, giddiness and joy win out over embarrassment, because when Keith’s mouth shifts into a crooked, sheepish smile, Lance forgets anything happened at all.

  


\--

  


The ensuing dinner conversation with the team goes both better and worse than Lance expected.

They’re not surprised, which Lance had already guessed at from all the teasing they’d been doing lately. They’re very happy for him and Keith, which he also expected. What he didn’t expect was the concern.

“How can you be dating if you can’t go on dates?” Pidge snarks.

“We can go on dates,” Lance replies, defensive. Now that him and Keith are on the same page, he’s oddly protective of their brand-new relationship. “We can go on walks around the Castle and eat cool food on alien planets and stuff! Best dates ever, right Keith?” 

Keith nods and grins. They’re holding hands under the table, and he squeezes Lance’s gently. “Yeah, who else gets to go on space dates?”

“Actual aliens,” Pidge says immediately, and Hunk snorts.

“This is a very bad idea,” Allura intervenes, shaking her head. “What if you two break up? You are quite literally trapped with each other. And if you’re not in good spirits, you can’t form Voltron, something that was made _very_ clear after this last mission.”

“We’re not gonna break up,” Keith says, angry, and Lance feels a weird surge of pride at his boyfriend ( _boyfriend_!) defending them.

Shiro raises an eyebrow. “That’s very optimistic of you, but you’re teenagers. If this is what you want to do, I have faith in you, but… we’re in a very high-stakes situation. If you’re gonna do this, you have to be committed.”

Keith and Lance meet eyes, and Keith’s face is serious and present and real. “I’m committed,” he says, his specific brand of warrior intensity all over it.

“Me, too,” Lance replies, just as serious, and Keith’s intense expression shifts into a nervous smile and hopeful eyebrows.

“Well, alright then!” Coran says, slamming his palms on the table, “I’ll whip you up some traditional Altean wedding jelly!”

Lance and Keith’s jaws both drop and they start shouting at him at the same time, a mix of surprised and desperate, but he’s already ran ahead to the kitchens to get started cooking and the team has dissolved into uproarious laughter. Lance sinks lower and lower in his chair until the only thing keeping him up is Keith’s hand in his own. He chances a look at Keith’s face and feels his cheeks start to get hot.

Keith is laughing and arguing with Hunk, who has already started planning their wedding. His eyes are crinkly and his face is the lightest shade of pleased pink, and he looks _so_ beautiful. Lance feels time and space and everything stop like some sort of dramatic movie moment, and the only sound is his own heart. The only sensation is Keith’s hand, warm and grounding, keeping him here, keeping him sane. He very suddenly realizes he doesn’t know what he’d do without him.

When Keith pulls him back up to sitting position, he grins at Lance happily, the most genuine expression of joy Lance has possibly ever seen on his face. Pride looks good on him.

Lance, for once, quietly observes what everyone else is doing. Hunk and Pidge are doubled over in their chairs cackling over something, Allura is consoling a newly-returned Coran about his gorgeous jelly that’s going to waste, and Shiro is cracking up over the Castle mice reenacting the whole scene in the middle of the table. And Keith-- Keith is laughing with them all, happy and safe and intact, and the absolute best thing Lance has ever held in his hands. 

And maybe they’re not quite whole yet, and maybe everything is complicated and they’re fighting a ten-thousand-year intergalactic war, and maybe they all still have nightmares about it all. Maybe this feeling won’t last. But as Lance looks at his found family, laughing and talking and enjoying each other’s company on the night that will become his and Keith’s anniversary, he thinks it all might possibly, eventually, turn out alright.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -disclaimer: i don't own voltron or any of the characters, this is my interpretation of a work of fiction and i'm just doing this for fun! fic title comes from california by kina grannis. (also there's a playlist for this fic i made you should totally check it out just sayin: https://playmoss.com/en/asterlark/playlist/itdlto-fic-playlist)
> 
> -i would really appreciate some kudos/comments on this!! feedback, positive or critical, is always welcome and since this is both my first voltron fic and the longest fic i've written i would really really appreciate it. thank you so much for reading!! (also check me out on tumblr if you want! asterlark.tumblr.com)
> 
> just the epilogue left after this! :o


	3. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -this is it!! last chapter!! thank you so much for reading, commenting, leaving kudos, all of it! it really means a lot to me so thank you! <3
> 
> -same as last time with the spanish, you'll be able to hover over it to see the translation but i'll also have the translations in the end notes!
> 
> -WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: nightmares, mentions of death, anxiety, insomnia, discussions of trauma, self-hating comments

“ _Mmph_ ,” Keith grunts in his sleep, rolling over and almost pushing Lance off the tiny bunk. He shoves Keith back towards his own side, but Keith just comes right back, settling his face on Lance’s chest. He smacks his lips a few times sleepily, then starts to snore again. Lance rolls his eyes, but can’t help his own fond smile.

He can’t really be grumpy about it, because he was already awake anyway. He’d had a nightmare, the same one that’s been keeping him up pretty much every night since him and Keith got together. Keith gets taken again, and instead of finding him and saving him this time, they’re far too late. He always wakes up just as the Galra guard sneers, “ _That pathetic boy? We killed him_ months _ago_.”

(Sometimes, Keith morphs into his mother, or one of his siblings, or Hunk, or Pidge, or Shiro, or-- or any person he cares about. It’s always the same, though. They’re gone, and he’s too late too save them. They’re gone, and it’s his fault. Somehow, always, it ends up being his fault.

One of the worst ones was when his mom was still alive, barely, and he had to watch-- and she kept saying, “ _Es tu culpa, es tu culpa_ ” and he woke up screaming, _lo siento, mamá, lo siento lo siento lo siento mucho_ \--)

Now, though, Keith is clinging to him like a sleepy, bed-hogging koala, probably drooling on his chest. His hair has almost completely fallen out of his bun and is hanging in loose strands around his face and down his neck. Lance gently removes his hair tie and starts slowly petting his hair, something he does to try and calm himself down when he’s anxious but doesn’t want to wake Keith.

Keith does wake up this time, though, blinking sleepily up at him. “Wass’ wrong?” he asks, frowning.

“Nothing, babe, you can go back to sleep,” Lance says, trying to give a convincing smile. Keith seems to be falling for it at first, especially since Lance keeps carding a hand through his hair, but then he sits up, forcing himself awake.

“Hey, no,” he says, soft and concerned. “It’s the dream again, right?”

Lance just shrugs. Keith sighs, placing a gentle hand on Lance’s cheek and stroking it with his thumb.

“I’m okay,” he says, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Lance is silent for a few moments. “You can’t promise that,” he decides on saying. It’s nothing he hasn’t argued before, but that doesn’t stop his brain from yelling it at him again and again.

“I can’t, but here I am, doing it anyway.” Keith’s hand is warm on Lance’s face and he closes his eyes, trying to get himself to relax.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, and he can hear Keith humming in disapproval.

“Don’t apologize, I’ve kept you up for stupider reasons than this for probably many more times than you have.”

Lance frowns, opens his eyes. “It’s never stupid with you, stop. You have actual trauma and stuff, what have I got?”

“Also trauma,” Keith replies, like it’s that simple. “And anxiety. Apply your logic to yourself, dummy.”

Lance harrumphs, and Keith raises an eyebrow. He harrumphs again, and Keith raises the other one.

He sighs, loud and frustrated. “I just feel… stupid. And I feel like we’re doomed because of me.”

“If anything, I’m the reason we’re doomed. There is so much wrong in my head, it’s not even funny,” Keith says. He’s playing with Lance’s hair now, which is harder now that it’s shorter-- he made Coran cut it because he got tired of constantly having sweaty helmet bangs. Keith finds ways to play with it, though. He runs his hand down the sides, through the slightly longer parts on the top, petting with the grain and against it.

“I fuck everything up,” Lance mumbles.

Keith, because he is the way that he is, takes this as a challenge. “I fuck everything up. Historically, I have fucked up so many things, you wouldn’t even believe.”

“I bet I fuck up more things than you.”

“Oh, I _know_ I fuck up more things than you.”

“Are we really having this argument right now?” Lance says, exasperated but still smiling. Against his own will, he might add.

Keith grins and flicks his nose. “Got you to smile,” he says, and Lance groans.

“Why are you so good at that,” he grumbles, bumping his head against Keith’s. He knows he’s just being crotchety now, but he doesn’t really care.

“Because I love you,” Keith says, again like it’s the simplest, most obvious statement in the world. The warmest feeling spreads throughout Lance’s stomach-- he’ll never get tired of hearing those words come out of Keith’s mouth, even all these months later.

He sighs, smiles. “I love you, too. Go to bed.”

Keith grins and wraps his limbs around Lance like an octopus. “Not until you do.”

“You can’t _make_ me go to sleep.”

“Yes I can. I’m cuddling you into submission.”

“I’m gonna go back in time and tell one-year-ago you that you said that.” Lance is grinning too by now, and Keith is looking at him like he holds the entire universe in his hands, and it’s completely overwhelming in the best way. 

“Please do,” Keith says, still smiling like an idiot, “That guy was really lonely and touch-starved.”

“Aw, babe,” Lance says, and hugs his boyfriend tighter. They feel warm and solid together, more one thing than two. He can’t tell where his limbs end and Keith’s begin, and he doesn’t want to try and figure it out. It’s nice to feel like he’s part of someone else.

Tangled up together and breathing into each other’s necks and hair, they both eventually drift off to sleep. This time, all Lance dreams of is the ocean, and a familiar boy with a fond smile sitting on the docks next to him, their hands clasped tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -disclaimer: i don't own voltron or any of the characters, this is my interpretation of a work of fiction and i'm just doing this for fun! fic title comes from california by kina grannis. (also there's a playlist for this fic i made you should totally check it out just sayin: https://playmoss.com/en/asterlark/playlist/itdlto-fic-playlist)
> 
> -TRANSLATIONS:  
>  _Es tu culpa, es tu culpa_ = It's your fault, it's your fault  
>  _Lo siento, mamá, lo siento lo siento lo siento mucho_ = I'm sorry, mom, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry
> 
> -i would really appreciate some kudos/comments on this!! feedback, positive or critical, is always welcome and since this is both my first voltron fic and the longest fic i've written i would really really appreciate it. thank you again so much for reading!! the feedback on this has been so great and i'm really grateful so THANK YOU!!
> 
> -hit me up on tumblr (asterlark.tumblr.com) if you wanna talk about the sequel i might write about shiro & matt!


End file.
